LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  Of 
CALIFORNIA 
SAM  DIE6O 


riff 

:-  f  • 

- 


THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 


THE    LITERATURE 
OF    ECSTASY 


BY 

ALBERT  MORDELL 

Author  of: 

The  Erotic  Motive  in  Literature 
Dante  and  Other  Waning  Classics 
The  Shifting  of  Literary  Values 


BONI    AND   LIVERIGHT 

Publishers  New  York 


THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 


COPYRIGHT,  1921,  By 
BONI  &  LIVERICHT,  INC. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


CHAPTER  I.     INTRODUCTION      ....         9 

CHAPTER  II.  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF 
ECSTASY 18 

CHAPTER    III.    ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM, 

ESSENTIAL  TO  POETRY 42 

CHAPTER  IV.  PROSE  THE  NATURAL 
LANGUAGE  OF  THE  LITERATURE  OF 
ECSTASY 77 

CHAPTER  V.  PROSE  PRECEDES  VERSE 
HISTORICALLY 96 

CHAPTER  VI.  BLANK  VERSE  AND  FREE 
VERSE  AS  FORMS  OF  PROSE  .  .  .  .  in 

CHAPTER  VII.  MORAL  AND  PHILO- 
SOPHICAL IDEAS  AS  POETRY  WHEN 
WRITTEN  WITH  ECSTASY 123 

CHAPTER  VIII.  POETRY  RISES  ABOVE 
ART  FOR  ART'S  SAKE  AND  INTUITION  138 

CHAPTER  IX.  HIGH  FORM  OF  POETRY 
ECSTATIC  PRESENTATION  OF  AD- 
VANCED SOCIAL  IDEALS 152 


viii  CONTENTS 

PACK 

CHAPTER  X.    LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 
EMANATES  FROM  THE  UNCONSCIOUS     179 

CHAPTER  XI.    LOVE   ECSTASY   IN   ARA- 
BIAN POETRY 203 

CHAPTER  XII.    CONCLUSION  226 


THE  LITERATURE  OF   ECSTASY 


CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTION 

FROM  time  immemorial  it  has  been  assumed  that  poetry 
is  something  which  is  caviare  to  the  general  public.  A 
"poem"  even  to-day  is  supposed  to  be  a  literary  compo- 
sition that  is  in  artificial  language  arranged  in  a  metrical 
pattern,  often  conveying  a  trite  idea  or  enshrining  an 
ineffective  image.  Thousands  of  volumes  and  essays 
have  been  written  on  poetry,  and  instead  of  fathoming  a 
true  conception  of  its  nature,  they  have  dealt  with  the 
trappings  and  garments  which  clothe  it;  these  indeed 
have  often  been  confused  with  poetry  itself.  As  a  result, 
there  has  grown  around  the  pathway  leading  to  poetry 
an  endless  maze  of  shrubbery.  The  reader  who  has  no 
knowledge  of  rules  and  laws  relating  to  verse,  who  is  ig- 
norant of  technical  requirements  and  established  uses, 
labors  under  the  delusion  that  he  does  not  like  poetry. 
Though  he  reads  many  works  in  prose  that  stir  a  deep 
emotional  appeal  within  him,  he  does  not  regard  himself 
as  one  of  those  lovers  who  haunt  the  foot  of  Parnassus 
Hill. 

I  wish  in  this  volume  to  present  a  conception  of  poetry 
freed  from  academic  and  conventional  standards.  I  wish 
to  restore  to  the  term  poetry  its  primary  and  fundamental 
significance  as  a  verbal  composition  in  which  the  pre- 
dominating feature  is  ecstasy.  Poetry  is  an  emotional 

9 


io    THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

atmosphere  that  pervades  all  literature  in  its  finest  parts ; 
it  characterizes  any  purely  personal  expression  of  the 
creative  imagination.  As  the  reader  perceives,  my  defini- 
tion of  poetry  includes  prose  literature  in  which  ecstasy 
is  present.  I  do  not  think  of  poetry  as  a  branch  of 
literature  couched  in  a  metrical  form,  following  regular 
rules  of  rhythm,  diction,  figures  of  speech  or  rhyme. 
My  conception  of  poetry  then,  is  not  that  of  a  depart- 
ment of  literature  which  is  opposed  to  prose,  but  of  an 
emotional  spirit  hovering  over  any  kind  of  writing, 
whether  in  verse  or  prose,  which  conveys  ecstasy. 

I  shall  try  to  show  especially  that  the  prose  literature 
of  ecstasy  fulfils  all  the  intrinsic  conditions  which  have 
been  associated  with  poetry.  I  shall  consider  the  question 
of  how  much,  or  rather  how  little,  the  element  of  rhythm 
or  any  other  pattern  is  essential  in  determining  the 
nature  of  poetry.  In  fact,  I  shall  even  maintain  that 
prose  irregularly  rhythmical  or  even  unrhythmical,*  just 
as  the  exigencies  of  the  emotion  require,  is  the  natural 
language  of  the  emotions,  that  it  was  so  at  the  very  be- 
ginnings of  literary  history,  and  has  in  fact  never  ceased 
being  used  as  such  a  vehicle.  I  shall  further  take  the 
position  that  the  set  forms  of  verse  which  have  grown 
up  among  all  nations  as  a  vesture  for  emotional  writing, 
have  been  more  or  less  pervaded  with  artificiality.  The 
final  judgment  as  to  the  nature  of  poetry  resides  in  the 
appeal  to  the  emotions.  The  test  of  poetry  is  not  in  the 
form  which  the  writer  uses,  or  in  compliance  with  rules 
of  prosody,  but  in  the  soul  of  the  reader  or  hearer.  If 
two  emotional  passages,  one  in  a  set  pattern  and  one  in 

*A11  prose  has  rhythm.  I  use  the  word  "unrhythmical" 
merely  to  designate  such  prose  where  the  rhythm  is  not  marked. 
There  is  no  sharp  dividing  line  between  rhythmical  and  un- 
rhythmical prose. 


INTRODUCTION  n 

prose  have  the  same  effect  upon  the  responsive  mechanism 
of  the  human  soul,  if  they  both  arouse  ecstasy,  it  matters 
not  if  you  refuse  to  call  the  prose  passage  poetry;  its 
effect  is  however  that  of  poetry.  It  stirs  and  moves  you 
to  rapture,  it  is  a  product  of  the  author's  unconscious,  it 
speaks  from  soul  to  soul,  it  is  beautiful  in  its  expressive- 
ness, it  has  a  rhythm  of  its  own.  I  shall  not  be  concerned 
if  you  refuse  to  call  this  emotional  prose  passage  poetry, 
but  it  does  belong  to  the  literature  of  ecstasy,  and  ecstasy 
was  and  is  the  first  condition  of  poetic  composition.  The 
poetry  in  verse  is  but  part  of  the  literature  of  ecstasy. 

I  shall  hence  deal  in  this  volume  largely  with  emotional 
or  impassioned  prose ;  for  it  belongs  to  the  literature  of 
ecstasy,  although  it  is  often  termed  poetic  prose,  or  some- 
times disparagingly,  prose  poetry.  Under  this  term  I 
shall  include  not  only  the  so-called  "fine  writing"  but 
emotional  passages  in  the  language  of  the  average  man, 
dialogues  from  prose  dramas,  novels  and  short  stories, 
and  I  shall  also  regard  criticism,  essays  and  works  on 
science  and  philosophy  highly  charged  with  feeling  as 
part  of  the  province  of  the  literature  of  ecstasy. 

This  work  becomes  thus  a  treatise  on  poetics,  and  will 
present  a  new  definition  of  poetry  which  will  include  all 
emotional  prose  writing. 

A  very  important  phase  of  the  subject  will  take  in  the 
connection  between  poetry  or  the  literature  of  ecstasy, 
and  various  spheres  of  human  thought,  such  as  ethical 
and  social  questions.  The  idea  will  be  shown  to  be  an 
important  factor  in  the  literature  of  ecstasy,  for  ecstasy 
does  not  preclude  the  intellectual  and  moral  activities. 
The  notion  of  art  for  art's  sake  thus  assumes  a  rather 
trivial  aspect.  Any  idea  whether  scientific  or  philosophic, 
moral  or  social,  if  ecstatically  presented,  becomes  itself 
literature  of  ecstasy,  or  poetry. 


12     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Should  the  reader  conclude  to  accept  the  prose  litera- 
ture of  ecstasy  as  poetry,  he  will  find  there  was  much 
poetry  in  the  world's  prose  literature  that  he  has  never 
recognized  as  such.  He  will  also  be  compelled  to  admit 
that  much  of  what  has  been  called  poetry,  because  written 
in  verse,  does  not  properly  belong  to  poetry,  as  not  being 
of  the  literature  of  ecstasy.  He  will  also  see  that  the 
artificial  classifications  of  the  different  kinds  of  poetry, 
such  as  epic,  dramatic,  pastoral,  satirical,  the  ode,  the 
sonnet,  the  ballad,  the  didactic  poem,  the  idyl,  the  elegy, 
etc.,  were  based  on  fallacies  and  were  confusing  and  er- 
roneous. There  is  only  one  species  of  poetry,  the  utter- 
ance of  the  ecstatic  state,  and  this  is  always  personal, 
whether  in  verse  or  prose,  and  hence,  has  a  lyrical  quality. 
If  the  poet  gives  the  utterances  of  other  people  in  ecstatic 
states,  these  also  are  lyrics.  Hence  every  composition 
whether  in  verse  or  prose,  that  records  ecstasy  here  and 
there,  is  lyrical  in  those  parts  where  the  ecstasy  is  de- 
picted. 

The  distinction  between  prose  and  verse  will  be  more 
clearly  defined,  if  we  refer  to  the  poetry  that  is  written 
in  both  these  forms  as  poetry  in  verse,  and  poetry  in 
prose. 

Sidney,  Shelley,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge  and  Whitman, 
all  of  whom,  besides  being  great  poets  themselves,  were 
probably  the  greatest  critics  of  poetry  in  the  English 
language,  took  cognizance  of  the  fact  that  the  great  emo- 
tional prose  writers  of  the  world  were  poets.  But  most 
of  the  critics  have  resented  this  attitude  and  have  gone 
on  in  the  unjust  classifications  that  recognize  as  a  poet 
the  petty  rhymster,  who  is  often  barren  of  both  emotions 
and  ideas.  They  also  deny  the  glorious  epithet  of  poet 
to  many  great  prose  masters  of  the  delineation  of  human 
passions. 


INTRODUCTION  13 

The  question  of  free  verse,  naturally  will  come  in  for 
consideration.  I  shall  show  that  it  is  really  rhythmical 
prose  arranged  so  as  to  call  attention  to  the  rhythms. 
I  believe,  however,  that  the  free  verse  writers  have  a 
right  to  make  such  linear  arrangement.  The  bulk  of  the 
poetry  of  the  future  may  very  likely  be  written  in  free 
verse  forms,  or  in  prose.  If  much  of  the  free  verse  of 
to-day  fails  in  being  poetry,  it  is  not  because  of  the  form, 
but  because  there  is  no  ecstasy  in  it,  or  in  the  poet's  soul. 
Most  of  the  poetry  of  the  Bible  is  really  in  free  verse; 
it  is  poetry,  however,  not  because  of  the  free  verse,  but 
because  it  presents  universal  phases  of  human  ecstasy. 

I  have  expressly  ignored  most  of  the  great  authors  who 
wrote  epics  and  dramas  in  verse,  and  also  most  of  the 
great  English  verse  poets,  for  I  wish  to  arrive  at  a  con- 
ception of  poetry  chiefly  from  prose  examples.  Most 
critics  have  assumed  that  they  could  never  learn  what 
poetry  was  unless  they  gave  examples  from  men  like 
Homer  and  Shakespeare,  Sophocles  and  Dante,  Spenser 
and  Milton.  I  rarely  quote  from  them,  not  because  I  do 
not  recognize  the  greatest  poetry  in  these  authors,  but 
because  I  wish  to  show  that  one  may  arrive  at  a  true  con- 
ception of  the  nature  of  poetry  by  illustrations  from  prose 
writers  of  ecstatic  literature  alone. 

Although  I  feel  that  the  artificial  verse  forms  hamper 
instead  of  beautify  the  expression  of  the  poet's  emotions, 
I  do  not  think  that  such  forms  ever  will  be,  nor  need  be 
utterly  abandoned.  Man  will  always  love  a  ringing, 
rhyming  ballad  or  song. 

I  have  devoted  a  chapter  to  the  poetry  of  the  most 
poetical  nation,  the  Arabs;  their  poets  produced  the 
anomaly  of  utilizing  the  most  artificial  metres,  and  yet 
never  lost  sight  of  the  fact  that  ecstasy  was  the  very  life 
of  the  poem.  Probably  no  poets  in  the  world  have  pro- 


14     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

duced  such  exquisite  love  poetry  as  the  Arabs ;  they  have 
also  had  great  influence  on  modern  European  poetry,  for 
it  is  being  recognized  that  modern  romantic  fiction,  es- 
pecially in  its  employment  of  the  tenderness  of  the  love 
sentiment  as  a  frequent  theme,  was  transplanted  from 
them. 

Poetry  is  the  soul  of  literature,  and  we  should  cease 
limiting  the  term  to  rhythmical  or  patterned  produc- 
tions, and  apply  it  to  emotional  writing  in  general.  No 
term  for  the  word  poet  in  any  language  that  I  am  ac- 
quainted with  includes  in  its  etymological  significance 
the  idea  of  rhythm  or  metrical  pattern.  The  Hebrew 
word  for  poet  is  one  who  utters  prophecies  or  para- 
bles; the  Greek  word  signifies  a  "maker";  the  Latin 
word  "seer,"  the  Arabian  word  "one  who  knows."  Critics 
of  the  Bible  have  especially  recognized  that  the  chief 
characteristic  of  both  the  true  and  the  false  prophet 
(Nabi)  was  the  ecstatic  state;  the  Bible  itself  is  of  course 
authority  for  this  fact.  The  inferior  prophet  was  one, 
however,  in  whom  the  ecstatic  state  was  hypnotically  pro- 
duced, in  whom  the  rational  and  moral  faculties  were 
suspended;  the  great  prophets  were  those  in  whom  a 
powerful  sense  of  social  justice  was  illuminated  by  the 
ecstatic  state;  hence  the  prophecies  of  the  Bible  are  not 
orations  wherein  rhetoric  is  a  factor,  but  genuine  litera- 
ture of  ecstasy,  or  poetry  in  rhythmical  prose,  using 
parallelism. 

I  need  not  continue  to  give  analyses  of  the  Greek 
"poetes,"  the  Latin  "vates,"  or  the  Arabian  "shair,"  for 
it  has  been  usually  conceded  that  these  words  all  refer  in 
their  primary  significance  to  the  imaginative  work,  or 
ecstatic  state  of  the  author,  and  not  to  the  mere  dabbler  in 
verse  forms. 

With  theories  of  poetry  being  a  product  of  the  unconr 


INTRODUCTION  15 

scious,  as  developed  by  Freud  and  his  disciples,  or  as  be- 
ing expression  as  advanced  by  Croce,  my  task  does  not 
become  so  utterly  devoid  of  reason  as  may  appear  at  first 
sight.  One  must  not  forget  that  the  critics  of  poetry  have 
formed  their  conceptions  of  poetry  by  deducing  rules 
from  the  verse  poems  of  the  world's  literature.  Instead 
of  looking  ahead,  they  have  always  looked  back.  When- 
ever a  new  great  poet  appeared,  like  Wordsworth,  Whit- 
man or  Ibsen  for  instance,  they  had  to  modify  their 
theories,  and  to  revise  their  books  on  poetics  and  rhetoric. 
If  the  productions  of  Homer  and  ^Eschylus  had  been  en- 
tirely different,  we  no  doubt  would  have  had  other 
conceptions  of  poetry  prevailing.  Yet  it  is  only  by  mere 
accident  that  Homer  dealt  with  gods,  wars,  mythical 
events  and  employed  dactylic  hexameter.  It  is  again  also 
by  pure  chance  that  ^schylus  used  various  metres,  made 
Prometheus  and  the  Furies  living  beings,  was  sponsor 
for  a  philosophy  of  divine  punishment  and  often  indulged 
in  artificial  diction.  Had  these  poets  written  novels  in- 
stead, conveying  just  as  much  genius  and  ecstasy  as  they 
did  in  their  verse  works,  the  critics  of  poetry  would  have 
deduced  an  entirely  different  conception  of  it. 

To  Democritus  belongs  the  honor  of  having  first  recog- 
nized among  the  Greeks  that  ecstasy  is  the  condition  of 
the  poet.  To  Plato  goes  the  distinction  for  having  fully 
developed  this  theory.  Aristotle  accepted  also  the  view 
that  poetry  is  ecstasy.  The  author  of  the  ancient  treatise 
On  the  Sublime  perceived  that  the  characteristic  of  poetic 
genius  is  in  the  arousing  of  the  ecstatic  state.  He  says, 
in  a  passage  which  deserves  citation:  "For  it  is  not  to 
persuasion  (i.  e.,  rhetoric)  but  to  ecstasy  that  passages 
of  extraordinary  genius  carry  the  hearer." 

But  the  ultimate  significance  of  my  volume  is  not  con- 
cerned with  the  prose  form  of  poetry,  but  with  poetry  as 


16    THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

a  psychological  process,  as  a  social  force  and  as  a  philo- 
sophical expression. 

Ecstasy,  imagination,  and  the  unconscious  are  all  con- 
vertible and  synonymous  terms  for  the  primary  source 
of  poetry.  They  are  the  fruitage  of  the  turmoil  of  the 
soul,  due  to  the  apparently  forgotten  memories  in  us 
of  the  emotional  lives  in  all  our  ancestors.  They  rep- 
resent also  the  impassioned  activities  of  our  logical 
and  rational  faculties,  the  sum  of  the  views  of  life  of  the 
past.  They  emanate  from  the  dream  life  of  man,  whether 
this  occurs  in  the  waking  or  sleeping  state.  They  are 
the  workings  of  the  force  we  call  inspiration. 

My  view  of  poetry  as  emotional  prose  literature  en- 
ables me,  I  hope,  to  eliminate  many  of  the  so-called  con- 
flicts between  poetry  and  philosophy  and  between  poetry 
and  morals.  Philosophical  and  moral  essays  become 
poetry  in  those  parts  lit  up  by  ecstasy  or  emotion.  If 
philosophy  deals  with  rare  and  profound  truths  in  regard 
to  the  universe,  if  morals  treat  of  the  noblest  relations 
between  man  and  man,  then  I  know  of  no  higher  form 
of  poetry  than  a  philosophical  truth,  or  a  moral  or  social 
conception,  when  ecstatically  stated;  I  can  think  of  no 
higher  literature  of  ecstasy  than  the  imaginative  utter- 
ance of  great  intellectual  conceptions  or  impassioned  ex- 
pression of  the  love  of  justice.  Shakespeare's  line,  "We 
are  but  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of,"  is  but  a  meta- 
physical theory  emotionally  put;  Isaiah's  rebuke  to  the 
corrupt  rich  is  but  a  didactic  saw,  ecstatically  delivered. 
Poetry  finds  its  best  material  in  metaphysical  and  ethical 
truths  emotionally  presented.  Lofty  ideas,  however,  and 
not  commonplace  deductions  or  conclusions  are  the  best 
material  for  poetry. 

I  recognize,  then,  as  great  poetry,  all  writings  in  which 
metaphysical  or  scientific  truth  and  the  spirit  of  social 


INTRODUCTION  17 

service  are  ecstatically  formulated  in  prose,  though  I 
make  no  terms  with  dry  didactic  works  that  pretend  to 
be  poetry.  I  see  the  workings  of  the  intellect  in  a  product 
of  the  imagination  and  I  try  to  show  that  logic  and  moral- 
ity have  not  been  so  hostile  to  the  poetic  faculty  as  they 
have  been  usually  deemed.  At  the  same  time  I  find  that  all 
poetry  is  a  product  or  expression  of  the  unconscious. 

This  is,  then,  not  a  book  to  teach  the  writing  of  poetry, 
but  a  study  of  the  poetic  faculty  in  literature,  not  in  rhet- 
orical terms,  but  by  an  appeal  to  the  emotional  life  of  the 
reader.  It  aims  to  point  out  the  best  examples  of  the 
literature  of  ecstasy  (or  poetry)  whether  in  verse  or  prose. 
It  shows  that  poetry  is  the  very  life  of  man's  soul,  that  he 
has  always  loved  it,  that  he  has  in  lieu  of  gratification  of 
a  good  and  true  poetic  faculty  often  spent  himself  in  culti- 
vating substitutes  for  it.  What  a  superficial  assumption 
that  because  people  do  not  like  verse  or  read  verse  (espe- 
cially trivial,  lifeless,  unhuman  verse)  they  therefore  do 
not  care  for  poetry!  Furthermore,  I  try  to  relate  the 
poet's  own  literary  revelation  back  to  himself,  just  as  the 
poet  sought  to  reveal  his  soul  to  the  reader. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   PSYCHOLOGY   OF   ECSTASY 

"THE  primal  and  danger-breeding  gift  of  ecstasy,"  says 
Huneker  in  his  essay  "Anarchs  and  Ecstasy"  in  Bedouins, 
"is  bestowed  upon  few.  Keats  had  it,  and  Shelley;  de- 
spite his  passion,  Byron  missed  it,  as  did  the  austere 
Wordsworth  * — who  had,  perhaps,  loftier  compensations. 
Swinburne  had  it  from  the  first.  Not  Tennyson  and 
Browning,  only  in  occasional  exaltation.  Like  the  cold 
devils  of  Felicien  Rops,  coiled  in  frozen  ecstasy,  the  winds 
of  hell  booming  about  them,  the  poetry  of  Charles  Baude- 
laire is  ecstatic.  Poe  and  Heine  knew  ecstasy.  .  .  . 
William  Blake  and  his  figures,  rushing  down  the  secret 
pathway  of  the  mystic,  which  zigzags  from  the  Fourth 
Dimension  to  the  bottomless  pit  of  materialism,  was  a 
creator  of  the  darker  nuances  of  pain  and  ecstasy." 

Ecstasy  is  derived  from  the  Greek  word  which  means 
to  make  stand  out;  the  mind  makes  sensible  things  stand 
out  because  it  is  concentrated  on  particular  emotions,  and 
on  the  ideas  associated  with  and  springing  from  these 
emotions.  We  must  not  make  the  mistake  of  thinking  that 
ecstasy  has  nothing  to  do  with  thought.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  too  much  occupied  with  thought.  It  in  fact  repre- 
sents a  form  of  monomania  connected  with  a  certain  idea. 
It  is  a  rapturous  state  in  which  the  person  is  governed  by 
preoccupation  with  a  definite  viewpoint.  The  poetic  con- 

*I  do  not  agree  with  Huneker  that  Byron  or  Wordsworth 
missed  ecstasy. 

18 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ECSTASY  19 

dition  of  ecstasy  to  which  I  refer  is  that  mentioned  by  the 
poet  Gray,  in  his  famous  Elegy,  when  he  speaks  of  one 
of  the  dead  who  might  have  "waked  to  ecstasy  the  living 
lyre."  He  again  uses  the  word  in  his  Progress  of  Poesie, 
when  he  speaks  of  Milton,  who  rode  "upon  the  seraph 
wings  of  ecstasy."  Undoubtedly  Gray  understood  by 
ecstasy  the  poetic  emotion  primarily.  In  fact,  any 
emotion  that  grips  a  man  strongly  may  be  called  ecstasy. 
Great  grief  or  joy,  pleasure  or  pain,  passion  or  tragedy, 
enthusiasm  for  an  idea  or  a  cause,  are  all  ecstatic  con- 
ditions. The  passion  for  social  justice,  an  intense  love  for 
humanity,  devotion  to  art,  beauty,  knowledge,  the 
emotions  of  a  happy  or  an  unhappy  lover,  all  constitute 
important  subjects  in  the  literature  of  ecstasy. 

But  the  ecstasy  must  be  a  universal  and  secular  ecstasy. 
There  are  two  kinds  of  ecstasies  which  though  universal 
may  manifest  themselves  in  such  primitive  forms  as  to 
appear  only  to  limited  circles.  I  refer  to  the  ecstasy  of 
chauvinism,  or  fanatical,  local,  unjust  patriotism,  and  to 
the  ecstasy  of  the  pathologically  religious  victim  whose 
views  border  on  hallucination.  For  example,  if  a  man 
goes  into  extreme  rhapsodies  about  his  particular  race  or 
country,  and  vituperates  the  people  of  other  races  or 
countries,  and  justifies  tyrannical  measures  towards  them ; 
if,  furthermore,  he  writes  under  the  assumption  that  all 
the  intellecual  and  moral  virtues  reside  in  his  people, — 
in  short,  if  he  is  purely  clannish  one  can  scarcely  expect 
his  literary  product  to  appeal  to  other  people  than  his 
own.  Again,  if  we  hear  or  read  the  outburst  of  a  devotee 
of  a  particular  religious  sect,  and  we  find  that  we  can 
agree  with  him  in  none  of  the  views  or  dogmas  he  enter- 
tains; if,  moreover,  we  observe  there  is  something  also 
anti-human  in  the  attitude  that  he  takes  towards  life,  we 
are  revolted  by  his  passionate  outpourings. 


20     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Though  every  nation  and  every  religion  is  and  should 
be  to  some  extent  clannish  and  sectarian,  still  no  literature 
that  is  purely  so  can  have  a  universal  appeal.  Hence, 
morbidly  mystical  poems,  celebrating  union  with  an  an- 
thropomorphic God,  poems  chanting  the  praises  of  con- 
quest and  imperialism,  poems  seething  with  hatred  for 
people  of  other  races  or  religions,  poems  poisoned  by 
hatred  for  humanity,  are  all  examples  of  the  literature  of 
ecstasy  of  a  low  order. 

On  the  contrary,  however,  the  literature  of  ecstasy  may 
be  both  religious  and  patriotic,  and  still  appeal  to  the  world 
at  large.  I  suppose  the  best  illustration  of  such  kind  of 
literature  is  the  psalms  in  the  Old  Testament.  They  strike 
a  universal  note  and  move  Christians,  Mohammedans, 
Jews,  free  thinkers  alike.  The  ecstasy  here  does  not 
depend  upon  the  author's  attachment  to  a  dogma,  but 
springs  most  frequently  from  a  love  of  righteousness  and 
humanity ;  hence  the  emotional  appeal  of  the  poet  touches 
even  those  who  are  not  deists.  -  There  are  also  fine  touches 
and  poignant  prayers  here  and  there  that  move  even  the 
non-Christian  in  some  of  the  works  of  St.  Augustine, 
Thomas  a  Kempis,  Pascal  and  Bunyan. 

We  are  not  concerned  here  with  the  idea  of  ecstasy  as  a 
state  that  is  supposed  to  give  us  glimpses  of  the  deity,  nor 
with  any  attempt  to  purify  us  by  divesting  our  soul  from 
the  imperfect  body  and  liberating  it  from  the  frailties 
of  the  flesh.  On  the  contrary,  ecstasy  is  nothing  more 
than  accumulated  ordinary  emotions  and  it  speaks  not  only 
with  the  body,  but  with  all  the  memories  of  the  body.  It 
makes  <ise  in  its  communications  to  us  of  those  very 
physical  infirmities  that  mystics  assume  it  shuns,  those  re- 
siding in  the  body  as  a  medium.  Ecstasy  employs  the 
mind,  and  thus  depends  on  the  brain,  the  nerves,  the 
physical  senses,  which  are  unconsciously  active  even  in  a 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ECSTASY  21 

trance,  and  speak  out  of  the  past.    Ecstasy  is  the  voice  of 

the  body.* 

Generally  speaking  the  ecstasy  we  mean  in  speaking  of 
poetry  is  not  the  same  as  that  known  to  mysticism.  How- 
ever, the  ecstasy  in  both  springs  from  the  unconscious 
and  is  the  fruit  of  an  emotional  soul  because  of  inherited 
memories  of  past  emotions.  In  the  ecstasy  of  the  mystic, 
which  is  usually  what  is  called  "religious  experience," 
there  is  really  little  application  of  the  reason.  It  is  even 
often  pathological  and  is  both  the  product  and  the  cause 
of  a  belief  in  absurd  dogmas.  It  is  often  merely  a  sub- 
limated passion  for  morality,  or  the  result,  as  Freudians 
have  shown,  of  a  hysterical  attachment  to  parents,  or  the 
idealization  of  a  father.  It  is  often  a  sublimated  sex  love 
due  to  repression.  Every  one  has  been  struck  with  the 
sensuous  images  in  the  conceptions  of  the  mystics. 
Broadly  speaking,  mysticism  seeks  a  condition  of  being 
united  to  a  personal  God  who  is  supposed  to  exist  outside 
of  nature;  it  craves  to  partake  of  His  holiness,  and  to 
cultivate  purity  and  be  rid  of  the  earthy.  He  who  rejects 
belief  in  an  anthropomorphic  God  or  to  the  mystics' 
particular  religions  can  have  little  of  the  mystics'  feelings. 
He  does  not  enter  into  sympathy  with  their  ideas,  and 
this  militates  against  the  university  of  mystic  poetry. 
The  ecstasy  does  not  "catch."  Most  of  the  mystic  poetry 
of  the  world,  especially  that  centering  around  asceticism 
and  dogma,  has  importance  only  for  the  believer  in  the 
mystic's  philosophy.  Very  little  of  it  has  literary  value, 
although  it  often  is  presented  in  an  emotional  and  effective 
manner. 

But  there  is  a  form  of  ecstasy  in  a  species  of  mysticism 

*  This  is  the  idea  in  Donne's  poem,  The  Ecstasy.  Professor 
William  Lyon  Phelps  in  the  preface  to  his  The  Advance  of 
English  Poetry  in  the  Twentieth  Century  claims  that  the  in- 
fluence of  Donne  has  never  been  greater  than  at  present. 


22    THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

that  is  universal  and  modern,  and  will  appeal  to  all  in  spite 
of  their  religious  beliefs.  When  the  poet  recognizing  God 
in  nature  seeks  to  identify  himself  with  nature  by  love  and 
admiration  for  her,  by  a  passion  for  a  life  that  is  in  ac- 
cordance with  her  commands,  his  poetry  embodying  such 
ecstasy  is  universal  and  is  lifted  into  a  high  plane.  It 
becomes  a  sort  of  ecstatic  statement  of  pantheistic  philoso- 
phy that  even  the  believer  may  accept.  That  is  why  the 
Persian  poet,  Jalalu  '1-Din  Rumi,  for  example,  appeals 
to  us  and  why  his  works  are  of  such  high  order. 

Sufism  or  Persian  mysticism  began  in  asceticism  and 
ended  in  pantheism.  It  became  a  desire  of  a  union  with 
nature.  In  fact,  it  was  an  ecstatic  state  of  love  for  man, 
nature,  God.  It  had  its  roots  however  in  physical  love, 
and  a  story  is  told  of  a  man  who,  wanting  to  become  a 
Sufi,  was  told  first  to  love  some  woman.  Some  critics 
even  declare  that  many  of  the  Persian  love  poems  are  really 
mystical  poems,  and  though  this  is  only  partly  true,  it 
is  certain  that  the  Persian  mystical  poems  are  really  love 
poems. 

The  mystic  poems  of  the  later  Mohammedan  Sufis  are 
in  fact  anti-Mohammedan,  and  yet  by  a  curious  paradox 
they  become  after  much  controversy  acceptable  to  the 
Church, 

There  is  also  much  that  is  modern  in  the  Pre-buddhistic 
Vedas  and  Upanishads,  and  in  some  Buddhistic  works,  be- 
cause of  the  pantheistic  character  of  the  ideas  and  the 
universality  of  the  emotions. 

The  ecstasy  of  the  pantheistic  mystic  is  a  secular  feeling 
that  we  all  experience,  and  is  the  substance  of  literature  in 
prose  and  verse.  We  have  much  modern  mystical  poetry 
that  has  a  universal  appeal ;  it  is  also  pantheistic  in  char- 
acter and  shows  the  poet's  desire  for  union  not  with  an 
anthropomorphic  God,  but  with  nature  whom  he  recog- 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ECSTASY  23 

nizes  as  his  God.  The  best  illustration  of  it  is  the  famous 
passage  in  Wordsworth's  lines  composed  above  Tintern 
Abbey,  in  which  he  tells  us  he  hears  in  nature  "the  still, 
sad  music  of  humanity."  The  entire  passage  is  great 
poetry,  not  because  of  the  blank  verse  but  because  of  the 
mystical  pantheistic  ecstasy. 

Sane  mystical  poetry  may  then  be  of  a  very  high  order. 
You  will  find  examples  of  it  in  Blake,  Emerson,  Tennyson, 
and  Matthew  Arnold.  Shelley's  Hymn  to  Intellectual 
Beauty,  Browning's  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,  Whitman's  Chanting 
the  Square  Deific  and  Swinburne's  Hertha  are  great 
mystical  poems.  These  and  others  will  be  found  in  the 
Oxford  Book  of  Mystical  Verse,  collected  by  D.  H.  S. 
Nicholson  and  A.  H.  E.  Lee. 

Some  years  ago  Arthur  Machen  produced  a  curious  and 
illogical  book,  Hieroglyphics,  where  he  touched  the  borders 
of  the  truth  of  the  distinction  between  the  literature  of 
ecstasy  and  general  literature,  but  he  introduced  too  many 
unbalanced  views  about  literature  being  unrelated  to 
life.  He  was  also  thinking  too  exclusively  of  that  re- 
ligious ecstasy  that  is  found  in  the  Catholic  Church  only. 
He  also  took  as  his  model  for  an  example  of  ecstasy, 
Pickwick  Papers,  where  there  is  really  little  ecstasy,  but 
he  found  none  in  Vanity  Fair  where  there  is  much.  He 
also,  strange  to  relate,  found  no  ecstasy  in  Meredith  or  the 
later  Hardy  novels,  and  in  no  intellectual  productions 
marked  with  liberal  thought  except  those  of  Rabelais. 
He  showed  no  insight  into  the  real  greatness  of  literature, 
because  of  his  narrow  conception  of  ecstasy. 

Ecstasy  in  the  broad  sense  is  any  excited  condition  of 
the  emotions.  Besides  the  meaning  the  word  has  in  a  nar- 
row mystic  and  a  medical  sense,  with  neither  of  which 
significances  are  we  here  concerned,  it  is  understood  gen- 
erally as  referring  to  any  condition  where  man  is  over- 


24     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

powered  by  his  feelings.  It  is  this  condition  which  makes 
the  poet  write,  and  the  reader  is  brought  into  a  similar 
state  with  the  poet  by  reading  the  poems.  Hence  when  the 
prose  writer  describes  his  ecstatic  state,  or  draws  people 
into  such  a  state,  he  is  also  a  poet.  The  critical  or  philo- 
sophical essay,  the;  novel  and  short  story  when  ecstatical, 
are  therefore  poetry. 

It  is  not  necessary  that  a  literary  production  should  be 
a  protracted  piece  of  ecstatical  writing. 

Many  people  are  under  the  impression  that  when  we 
speak  of  ecstasy  we  mean  a  state  where  reason  is  utterly 
dethroned.  Yet  the  Greeks,  who  make  inspiration  the 
source  of  art,  never  let  the  passions  so  rule  that  utter  chaos 
resulted  in  the  poet's  creation.  In  Greek  literature  we 
have  a  blending  of  reason  and  ecstasy.  Professor 
Butcher  has  pointed  out  in  his  excellent  essay  on  "Art  and 
Inspiration,"  in  his  Harvard  Lectures  on  Greek  Subjects, 
the  potency  of  reason  in  Greek  poetry.  The  ideas  of  the 
Greek  writers  were  emotionalized,  and  there  were  ideas  in 
their  emotional  products.  Demosthenes  was  like  Plato,  a 
passionate  thinker ;  Pindar,  ^Eschylus  and  Sophocles  were 
reasoning  poets. 

The  Greeks  used  the  word  ecstasy  in  a  modern  secular 
sense  rather  than  in  a  spiritual  or  pathological  one.  It 
was  the  unconscious  memory  of  the  poet  coming  to  the 
fore  and  utilizing  the  intellect  to  pour  light  on  the  soul. 
It  was  not  the  mystic's  ecstasy  where  irrational  conclusions 
were  arrived  at  because  of  some  abnormality  in  the  seer. 
The  poet  was  always  a  critic  and  a  philosopher  who  tamed 
his  wildest  thoughts.  "Moderns  are  prone,"  says  Butcher, 
"to  believe  that  the  action  of  poetic  genius  abdicates  its 
rights  and  descends  to  the  lower  level  of  talent  when  it 
begins  to  reason.  Greek  literature  decisively  refutes  such 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ECSTASY  25 

a  notion.  It  exhibits  the  critical  faculty  as  a  great  under- 
lying element  in  the  creative  faculty." 

Greek  poetry  then  is  the  portrayal  of  reasoning  passion, 
using  at  the  same  time  a  conscious  technique.  It  was  the 
outpouring  of  the  personality  of  the  poet  made  up  of  his 
intellect  and  passions.  It  represented  the  breaking  forth 
of  the  unconscious  into  expression,  controlled  by  a  censor- 
ship on  the  part  of  the  poet. 

Plato's  idea  about  poetry  being  a  form  of  madness  may, 
however,  still  be  accepted,  when  we  understand  by  madness 
the  being  imbued  with  one's  emotions  in  a  manner  not  de- 
priving the  poet  of  his  intellectual  powers.  Poetry  is  only 
the  result  of  inspiration,  if  by  this  term  we  mean  that  ra- 
tionalized emotions  have  so  accumulated  as  suddenly  to 
seek  expression.  Every  poet,  in  prose  or  verse,  writes 
from  the  unconscious  and  he  usually  gets  lost  in  his  own 
characters  or  speaks  directly  in  his  own  person.  The 
writer,  however,  is  not  mad,  nor  is  his  art  allied  to  mad- 
ness. He  is  usually  too  sane,  using  his  judgment  at  the 
same  time  that  his  emotions  are  aroused.  So  we  can  still 
subscribe  to  Plato's  idea  of  unconscious  art,  put  in  the 
mouth  of  Socrates  in  the  dialogue  Ion: 

All  good  poets,  epic  as  well  as  lyric,  compose  their 
beautiful  poems  not  by  art,  but  because  they  are  inspired 
and  possessed;  like  the  Corybantian  revellers  in  their 
dances,  who  are  not  in  their  right  mind  when  they  are  com- 
posing their  beautiful  strains,  yet  who,  when  falling  under 
the  power  of  music  and  metre  are  inspired  and  possessed ; 
like  Bacchic  maidens  who  draw  milk  and  honey  from  the 
rivers  when  they  are  under  the  influence  of  Dionysus,  but 
not  when  they  are  in  possession  of  their  mind.  And  the 
soul  of  the  lyric  poets  does  the  same,  as  they  themselves 
say;  for  they  tell  us  that  they  bring  songs  from  the 
honeyed  fountains,  culling  them  out  of  the  gardens  and 
dells  of  the  Muses ;  they  are  like  bees,  winging  their  way 
from  flower  to  flower.  And  this  is  true.  For  the  poet  is 


26     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

a  light  winged  and  holy  thing,  and  there  is  no  invention  in 
him  until  he  has  been  inspired  and  is  out  of  his  senses,  and 
the  mind  is  no  longer  in  him :  when  he  has  not  attained  to 
this  state,  he  is  powerless  and  is  unable  to  utter  his  oracles. 

The  expressions  referring  to  being  out  of  the  mind  and 
senses  must  not  be  taken  literally. 

As  long  as  we  bear  in  mind  that  Plato's  idea  of  madness 
is  merely  the  concentration  on  one  topic,  his  idea  of  poetry 
is  true. 

A  remark  of  Socrates  in  the  Phaedrus  should  be  well 
pondered  by  disciples  of  art  for  art's  sake.  "He  who 
having  no  touch  of  the  Muses'  madness  in  his  soul  comes 
to  the  door  and  thinks  that  he  will  get  into  the  temple  by 
the  help  of  art — he,  I  say,  and  his  poetry  are  not  admitted." 

Plato  himself  was  one  of  the  finest  of  ancient  poets,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  he  wanted  to  exclude  poets  from  his 
ideal  commonwealth.  Some  of  the  finest  prose  poems  and 
allegories  of  ancient  literature  are  found  in  his  Republic, 
the  Phaedrus  and  Symposium.  Most  of  these  are  known 
to  us,  and  need  no  mention.  When  Plato  speaks  of  love, 
he  does  so  as  a  poet,  and  the  passages  on  the  subject  in  the 
last  two  named  dialogues  are  full  of  poetry. 

I  wish  to  give,  besides  the  above  passage,  as  an  illustra- 
tion of  Plato's  own  prose  poetry,  part  of  a  speech  by 
Alcibiades.  It  is  at  the  conclusion  of  the  Symposium,  and 
is  part  of  Alcibiades's  tribute  to  Socrates  and  his  speeches. 
Socrates,  himself,  thinks  the  speech  is  delivered  to  create 
trouble  between  him  and  Agathon,  of  whom  Alcibiades  is 
jealous.  The  speech  is  ruined  also  by  a  reference  at 
length  to  a  phase  of  Greek  life  which  is  repulsive  to  us. 
After  likening  Socrates  to  Silenus  and  to  Marsyas,  Alci- 
biades continues  in  the  following  prose  poem : 

For  my  heart  leaps  within  me  fore  than  that  of  any 
Corybantian  reveller,  and  my  eyes  rain  tears  when  I  hear 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ECSTASY  27 

them.  And  I  observe  that  many  others  are  affected  in  the 
same  manner.  I  have  heard  Pericles  and  other  great 
orators,  and  I  thought  that  they  spoke  well,  but  I  never 
had  any  similar  feeling ;  my  soul  was  not  stirred  by  them, 
nor  was  I  angry  at  the  thought  of  my  own  slavish  state. 
But  this  Marsyas  has  often  brought  me  to  such  a  pass 
that  I  have  felt  as  if  I  could  hardly  endure  the  life  which 
I  am  leading  (this,  Socrates,  you  will  admit)  ;  and  I  am 
conscious  that  if  I  did  not  shut  my  ears  against  him  and 
fly  as  from  the  voice  of  the  siren  my  fate  would  be  like 
that  of  others — he  would  transfix  me,  and  I  should  grow 
old  sitting  at  his  feet.  For  he  makes  me  confess  that  I 
ought  not  to  live  as  I  do,  neglecting  the  wants  of  my  own 
soul,  and  busying  myself  with  the  concerns  of  the  Athen- 
ians; therefore  I  hold  my  ears  and  tear  myself  away  from 
him.  And  he  is  the  only  person  who  ever  made  me 
ashamed,  which  you  might  think  not  to  be  in  my  nature, 
and  there  is  no  one  else  who  does  the  same.  For  I  know 
that  I  cannot  answer  him  or  say  that  I  ought  not  to  do  as 
he  bids,  but  when  I  leave  his  presence  the  love  of  popu- 
larity gets  the  better  of  me.  And  therefore  I  run  away 
and  fly  from  him,  and  when  I  see  him  I  am  ashamed  of 
what  I  have  confessed  to  him.  Many  a  time  have  I 
wished  that  he  were  dead,  and  yet  I  know  that  I  should 
be  more  sorry  than  glad,  if  he  were  to  die ;  so  that  I  am  at 
my  wit's  end. 

Symonds  tells  us  that  ^Eschylus  was  the  great  example 
of  unconscious  art  among  Greek  playwrights,  and  that  he 
exemplifies  Plato's  theory  of  poetry. 

^schylus's  creation  Cassandra  is  a  good  illustration  of 
a  character  in  an  ecstatic  state.  Cassandra  is  both 
prophetess  and  poetess,  and  her  cries  move  us  to  this  day, 
when  much  of  ^schylus's  moral  and  religious  philosophy 
bores  and  irritates  us.  She  is  the  incarnation  of  woman 
suffering.  She  was  ravished  at  Troy  by  Ajax  and  was 
given  to  Agamemnon  as  prisoner  of  war,  she  the  princess, 
daughter  of  Priam  and  Hecuba.  She  had  lost  most  of  the 
members  of  her  family  and  now  anticipated  great  trouble 


28     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

for  Agamemnon  whose  wife  Claetemnestrae  was  unfaith- 
ful to  him.  She  also  foresaw  her  own  death  at  the  queen's 
hands,  but  it  was  her  punishment  that  her  prophecies 
would  not  be  heeded.  She  is  partly  mad,  but  hers  is  the 
poetic  frenzy,  tempered  by  logic.  Her  most  meaningless 
ravings  are  full  of  meaning.  They  are  poetry  not  be- 
cause of  the  metre  in  which  they  are  rendered,  but  because 
of  the  rational  ecstasy.  This  ecstasy  remains  intact  even 
in  the  English  prose  translation. 

Nietzsche  divided  art  into  Apollonian  and  Dionysian. 
He  found  that  the  Dionysian  state  depended  on  emotional 
or  orgiastic  intoxication.  He  perceived  that  the  ecstasy 
in  this  state  was  largely  of  a  sexual  character.  As  he 
boldly  put  it,  "The  desire  for  art  and  beauty  is  an  indirect 
longing  for  the  ecstasy  of  sexual  desire,  which  gets  com- 
municated to  the  brain."  This  is  the  thesis  that  Freud 
developed.  Croce,  who  has,  however,  something  of  the 
metaphysician  and  mystic  in  him,  is  not  in  sympathy  with 
this  view,  for  he  ridicules  the  idea  that  the  genesis  of 
aesthetism  lies  in  the  desire  of  the  male'  for  the  female. 
Yet  he  agrees  with  Freud  in  the  conception  that  art  is  a 
means  of  curing  oneself  of  sexual  neurosis.  "By  elabor- 
ating his  impressions,"  says  Croce,  "man  frees  himself 
from  them.  By  objectifying  them,  he  removes  them  from 
him  and  makes  himself  their  superior.  The  liberating  and 
purifying  function  of  art  is  another  aspect  and  another 
formula  of  its  character  and  activity.  Activity  is  the  de- 
liverer, just  because  it  drives  away  passivity." 

Finely  put,  indeed,  are  the  words  of  Nietzsche's  views  on 
ecstasy.  "To  the  existence  of  art,  to  the  existence  of  any 
aesthetic  activity  or  perception  whatsoever,  a  preliminary 
psychological  condition  is  indispensable,  namely  ecstasy. 
Ecstasy  must  first  have  intensified  the  sensitiveness  of  the 
whole  mechanism ;  until  this  takes  place  art  is  not  realized. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ECSTASY  29 

All  kinds  of  ecstasy,  however  differently  conditioned, 
possess  this  power ;  above  all  the  ecstasy  of  sexual  excite- 
ment, the  oldest  and  most  primitive  form  of  ecstasy." 

Plato,  it  will  be  recalled,  compared  the  state  of  the  poet 
to  that  of  the  reveller  in  the  Bacchanalian  rites.  The 
favorable  side  of  the  worship  of  Dionysius  or  the  Bacchic 
revels  has  been  shown  by  Euripides  in  his  play  the  Bacchae. 
He  shows  how  King  Pentheus  was  torn  to  pieces  in  mis- 
take by  his  own  mother  for  his  hostility  to  the  bacchic 
rites.  Bacchus  himself  is  the  hero  of  the  play.  As  the 
chorus  says,  Bacchus  is  innately  modest  and  modest 
women  will  not  be  corrupted  at  the  revels.  Who  is  not 
moved  by  the  song  of  the  Chorus?  "Would  that  I  could 
go  to  Cyprus,  the  island  of  Venus,  where  the  lovers  dwell, 
soothing  the  minds  of  mortals,  and  to  Paphos,  which  the 
waters  of  a  foreign  river  flowing  with  an  hundred  mouths 
fertilize  without  rain — and  to  the  land  of  Pieria,  where  is 
the  beautiful  seat  of  the  Muses,  the  holy  hill  of  Olympus. 
Lead  me  thither,  O  Bromius,  Bromius,  O  master  thou  of 
Bacchanals.  There  are  the  Graces  and  there  is  Love  and 
there  is  it  lawful  for  the  Bacchae  to  celebrate  their  orgies." 

The  ecstasy  of  the  revellers  at  the  rites  was  poetic 
ecstasy,  for  it  was  an  unconscious  or  conscious  erotic 
nature  manifesting  itself  in  the  form  of  a  religious  rite. 
Bacchus,  aside  from  being  god  of  wine,  was  the  symbol 
of  productiveness  and  was  accompanied  by  Priapus,  and 
the  phallus  was  carried  about.  He  was  youthful  and  his 
symbols  were  animals  like  the  goat,  ass,  bull,  tiger,  lion, 
all  of  which  had  erotic  significance.  The  ecstatic  rites 
with  which  he  was  worshipped  were  introduced  from 
Thrace. 

Aristotle  attributes  the  origin  of  tragedy  to  the  use  of 
the  dithyramb  of  the  revellers,  and  comedy  to  the  phallic 
songs  sung  by  them.  The  point  is  that  love  frenzy  leads 


30    THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

to  poetry,  and  we  have  an  illustration  of  it  in  the  con- 
nection between  the  Bacchic  rites  and  poetry,  between 
love  and  art.  The  rites  degenerated  under  the  Romans 
and  were  soon  suppressed  by  law. 

Nietzsche  gives  us  a  profound  interpretation  of  Euri- 
pides's  play  in  the  twelfth  section  of  The  Birth  of 
Tragedy.  It  is  the  old  story  of  the  battle  between  the 
emotions  and  reason,  the  instinct  and  the  intellect,  problems 
which  men  as  different  as  Hearn,  Bergson,  Nietzsche, 
Pater  and  Freud  solved  by  seeking  liberties  for  the  in- 
stinct. Pentheus,  who  represents  reason,  is  the  enemy  of 
Bacchus,  but  fascinated  by  him,  loses  his  life ;  reason  leads 
to  death  when  it  makes  no  concession  to  the  instincts.  The 
play  was  a  protest  by  Euripides  against  his  own  moraliz- 
ing tendencies.  The  lesson  of  the  sages  Cadmus  and 
Tiresius  is,  in  the  words  of  Nietzsche,  that  we  must  dis- 
play a  diplomatically  cautious  concern  in  the  presence  of 
the  emotional  forces.  Don't  trifle  with  poetry  and  the 
ecstasies  that  produce  it. 

The  older  interpretation,  which  even  Pater  adopted  in 
his  Greek  Studies,  that  Euripides  wrote  the  play  as  a  re- 
pentance for  his  liberal  views  and  to  signify  his  return  to 
the  conservatism  of  the  Greek  religion,  is  no  longer  held. 
Gilbert  Murray  and  others  have  also  shown  the  fallacy 
of  this  view,  but  Nietzsche  anticipated  them. 

The  most  primitive  and  universal  ecstasy  is  that  which 
is  concerned  with  the  attraction  of  the  sexes.  Poetry 
after  all  deals  chiefly  with  love,  for  in  the  relations  of  the 
sexes  we  have  the  source  of  most  of  the  pleasurable  and 
painful  emotions  of  humanity.  Sexual  love  even  when 
most  hidden  is  at  the  root  of  all  love  between  the  sexes.  It 
is  for  this  reason  that  we  can  still  appreciate  the  oldest 
lyric  poetry  of  different  nations. 

True,  two  of  our  greatest  of  modern  poets,  Wordsworth 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ECSTASY  31 

and  Whitman,  dealt  hardly  at  all  with  romantic  love,  and 
other  poets  like  Shelley  and  Swinburne  have  written  be- 
sides love  poetry,  passionate  defences  of  liberty  and  re- 
publicanism. But  still  it  is  the  relations  of  the  sexes 
which  most  interests  people  in  a  play,  a  novel  or  a  poem. 

And  the  love  poetry  of  the  world  is  naturally  to  be 
found  in  prose  as  well  as  in  verse.  Many  of  our  modern 
poets  in  their  love  poetry  have  not  given  us  any  better 
poetry  than  some  of  Heloise's  love  letters  in  prose. 

Love  is  the  foundation  of  poetry  and  for  this  reason 
poetry  always  will  be  with  us,  and  probably  more  so  in 
prose  than  in  verse.  We  want  literature  that  deals  with 
it,  and  we  like  love  poetry  whether  in  the  prose  letters  of 
Keats,  the  Carlyles,  the  Brownings  and  Madame  Lespi- 
nasse,  or  in  the  novels  of  Hardy,  Turgenev,  Tolstoy, 
Balzac,  or  in  the  verse  of  Hafiz,  Burns,  Shelley,  Browning, 
Heine  or  Verlaine. 

Professor  Woodberry  has  made  a  special  plea  in  his 
Inspiration  of  Poetry  for  a  return  of  poetry  to  poetic  mad- 
ness. Emotion  is  the  chief  and  most  important  element  of 
poetry.  "Emotion"  as  Woodberry  says,  "is  the  condition 
of  their  (the  poets')  existence;  passion  is  the  element  of 
their  being."  When  we  think  of  the  great  figures  in 
fiction  who  are  to  us  the  most  poetic,  we  think  of  Oedipus, 
Orestes,  Hamlet,  Lear,  Macbeth,  Goriot,  Grandet,  Arthur 
Dimmesdale,  Jean  Valjean,  Anna  Karenina,  Oswald  Al- 
ving.  Passion  is  the  element  that  makes  a  character 
poetic.  But  any  emotion  in  which  the  poet  steeps  his 
poems,  interests  us.  We  read  Heine,  Byron,  Burns,  Ver- 
laine, because  we  wish  to  find  our  own  emotions  ex- 
pressed. But  not  every  petty  feeling,  like  the  shades  and 
nuances  we  find  in  much  verse,  is  great  poetry,  nor  is  the 
record  of  every  trivial  event  important  poetry. 

But  emotions  described  by  the  poet  affect  people  dif- 


32     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

ferently.  I  may  find  great  emotion  in  reading  about  a 
man  who  sacrifices  himself  for  a  great  and  unpopular  idea, 
but  others  may  not  be  interested  in  that  man  or  his  idea 
and  hence  will  not  be  moved  by  the  work.  Such  a  work 
is  poetry  to  me  and  like  minded  readers.  Further,  dif- 
ferences of  intellectual  outlook  on  the  part  of  the  readers 
count  in  determining  poetry.  Socrates,  Buddha,  Bruno 
and  Galileo  are  poetic  figures  to  us  to-day ;  they  have  been 
enshrined  in  poetry  and  history  and  we  accept  many  of 
their  ideas.  But  to  their  contemporaries  who  rejected 
them  they  were  not  poetic  figures.  Who  knows  but  that 
there  are  figures  to-day  we  scoff  at  who  may  have  a  halo 
of  poetry  in  history? 

A  distinct  but  by  no  means  essential  quality  of  the 
literature  of  ecstasy  is  that  of  pain.  There  is  more  pain 
depicted  in  the  world's  literature  than  pleasure.  In  his 
The  Nature  of  Poetry,  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman  speaks 
of  a  certain  sadness  or  melancholy  in  the  poetry  of  the 
nineteenth  century  but  he  might  have  said  this  was  true 
of  the  poetry  of  any  century.  Most  poetry  is  sad,  for  life 
often  is,  and  the  poet  is  naturally  interested  in  and  pays 
most  attention  to  the  painful  emotions  that  trouble  him. 
Tragedy  and  elegy  (and  the  term  elegy  was  used  by  the 
Romans  not  only  to  bemoan  the  dead,  but  to  deplore 
sad  love  affairs)  are  predominant  in  all  literature,  prose 
and  verse. 

We  always  find  a  poet's  outburst  of  sorrow  interesting. 
The  poems  of  the  Hebrews,  Persians,  Arabians,  Chinese 
and  Japanese  may  be  read  by  us  because  they  voice  the 
sorrows  that  are  universal  to  man.  Grief  is  the  substance 
of  poetry  and  in  the  public  mind  there  has  always  been  an 
association  between  poetry  and  sadness ;  as  Shelley  said — 
"our  sweetest  songs  are  those  that  told  the  saddest 
thought." 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ECSTASY  33 

It  is  assumed  that  Christianity  made  poetry  sad  but  this 
is  not  so,  for  there  is  sad  poetry  in  the  Old  Testament  and 
among  the  Romans  and  the  Orientals  who  never  embraced 
Christianity.  Poetry  is  sad  because  it  is  intertwined  with 
human  nerves.  The  most  frequent  note  in  poetry  is  wail- 
ing and  lamentation,  self-pity  and  passionate  rebuke. 

In  Professor  William  A.  Neilson's  Essentials  of  Poetry, 
there  is  an  interesting  chapter  on  sentimentalism  in  poetry, 
in  which  the  author  dwells  on  the  sentimentalism  in  the 
poetry  of  the  English  Romantic  School.  He  defines  it  as 
the  cultivation  of  an  emotion  for  the  sake  of  the  thrill. 
Most  certainly  there  can  be  no  great  poetry  where  the 
sentimentalism  is  forced,  where  it  becomes  ridiculous, 
where  it  bubbles  over  and  becomes  monotonous.  Senti- 
mentalism often  characterizes  popular  poetry  and  if  the 
public  is  likely  to  err  in  judging  poetry  it  is  particularly 
likely  to  confuse  sentimentalism  with  normal  human  emo- 
tions. Yet  it  is  hard  often  to  draw  the  line  between  sham 
emotions  and  genuine  sentiment. 

The  poet  is  bound  to  be  always  sentimental  to  an  extent 
because  he  must  wear  his  heart  on  his  sleeve.  No  one 
need  be  ashamed  of  unadulterated  emotions,  for  life  is 
made  up  of  them. 

Besides,  nationalities  differ.  The  Irish,  the  Jews  and  the 
Russians,  for  example,  do  not  consider  their  own  poems 
sentimental  because  these  are  genuine  records  of  actual 
feelings  characteristic  of  sentimental  peoples;  to  be  sure, 
such  expressed  emotions  may  appear  as  sentimental  to  the 
rest  of  the  world.  Many  think  that  the  emotion  of  pity, 
and  also  sympathy  for  the  criminal  that  we  find  in  Russian 
novels  is  rather  sentimental  and  nauseating,  but  it  is 
genuine  Russian  emotion. 

We  should  be  on  our  guard,  however,  in  regarding 
sentimentalism  as  poetry.  The  public  loves  cheap  popular 


34     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

songs  and  mushy  lachrymose  verses.  The  many  poems, 
stories  and  plays  about  "mother,"  "baby,"  "the  flag," 
"home,"  "our  country,"  etc.,  are  often  drivelling  senti- 
mentalism  and  not  poetry. 

Ecstasy  was  the  keynote  of  Oriental  poetry.  We  are 
fortunate  in  having  a  translation  in  the  Journal  of  the 
Royal  Asiatic  Society  for  1901  and  1902  by  Duncan  B. 
Macdonald,  of  a  book  on  the  laws  of  music  and  singing  of 
ecstasy  from  Al  Ghazzali's  work  on  the  Re-vivifying  of 
the  Sciences  of  the  Faith.  Ghazzali  (1060-1111)  was  the 
greatest  apologist  for  Islam  and  is  known  as  "The  Proof 
of  Islam."  He  was  held  to  be  the  only  man  who  was 
worthy  of  being  a  prophet,  next  to  Mohammed  himself. 
He  unfortunately  dealt  the  death  blow  to  Mohammedan 
philosophy  and  Averroes  wrote  against  him.  But  no  one 
among  Arabs  had  as  grand  a  conception  of  ecstasy  in 
connection  with  poetry  as  he  did.  He  was  influenced  by 
the  Persian  Sufis  and  defined  ecstasy  in  a  very  modern 
manner.  We  may  dispense  with  his  mystic  conception  of 
it  and  pay  attention  only  to  his  definition  of  it  in  its  re- 
lation to  poetry.  Great  admirer  as  he  was  of  the  Koran 
he  recognized  that  poetry  is  more  in  accord  with  human 
nature  than  that  work,  and  he  quotes  an  authority  to  the 
effect  that  our  being  constituted  of  fanciful  desires  makes 
us  more  moved  by  poets  than  by  the  word  of  God.  He 
finds  various  reasons  for  the  power  of  poetry  over  us, 
the  principal  one  being  its  quality  of  ecstasy.  He  sees 
that  poetry  has  a  mission  in  conveying  ecstasy ;  that  one  of 
its  uses  is  to  arouse  us  to  lamentation,  to  joy,  to  love,  to 
courage  and  to  religion.  He  analyzes  the  tender  longing 
caused  by  love  poetry,  though,  good  Moslem  that  he  was, 
he  is  always  discriminating  between  poetry  that  arouses 
a  lawful  love,  and  that  which  has  mere  lust  as  its  object. 

His  main  contribution,  however,  to  the  philosophy  of 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ECSTASY  35 

ecstasy  is  his  recognition  of  its  identity  with  the  uncon- 
scious. He  quotes  some  one  to  the  effect  that  music  and 
singing  do  not  produce  in  the  heart  what  is  not  in  it  but 
stir  up  what  exists  there.  Ecstasy  to  him  is  the  result  of 
hearing  and  of  understanding  what  is  heard  and  applying 
it  to  an  idea  which  occurs  to  the  hearer.  It  is  a  condition 
produced  in  the  hearer's  soul  due  to  knowledge  or  emotion, 
and  the  condition  is  varied.  The  following  passage  is 
especially  worthy  of  quotation :  "As  for  the  states,  how 
many  a  man  gets  so  far  as  to  perceive  in  his  heart,  on  some 
occasion  which  may  appear  in  it,  a  contraction  or  an  ex- 
pansion, yet  he  does  not  know  its  cause!  And  a  man 
sometimes  thinks  about  a  thing,  and  it  makes  an  impres- 
sion on  his  soul.  Then  he  forgets  the  cause,  but  the  im- 
pression remains  upon  his  soul,  and  he  feels  it.  And, 
sometimes,  the  condition  which  he  feels  is  a  joy  which 
arose  in  his  soul  on  his  thinking  about  a  cause  which  pro- 
duces joy ;  or  it  may  have  been  a  sorrow ;  then  he  who  was 
thinking  about  it  forgets  it,  but  feels  in  the  impression  its 
consequence.  And  sometimes  that  condition  is  a  strong 
condition  which  a  word  expressing  joy  or  sorrow  does  not 
indicate  clearly  and  for  which  he  cannot  come  upon  a 
suitable  expression  for  what  was  intended." 

Al  Ghazzali  gives  then,  as  the  essence  of  ecstasy,  its  un- 
conscious nature.  Ecstasy  is  related  to  longing  for  some- 
thing unknown.  All  people  experience  in  their  hearts 
states  demanding  things  unknown  to  them.  He  compares 
the  situation  to  that  of  the  innocent  and  ignorant  youth  in 
puberty  who  is  in  a  state  unexplained  to  him.  Al  Ghaz- 
zali is  one  of  the  first  of  modern  critics  to  formulate  the 
theory  of  ecstasy  as  the  end  of  poetry,  and  his  argument 
explains  the  vogue  of  love  and  mystic  poetry.  He  recurs, 
it  is  true,  to  the  influence  of  metre  in  poetry  in  inducing 
ecstasy,  but  he  is  always  thinkng  of  the  ecstasy  of  love 


36     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

of  man  and  God  as  the  element  of  poetry,  and  in  this  he  is 
a  predecessor  of  Tolstoy.  He  also  gives  rules  as  to  one's 
behavior  in  the  ecstatic  state  and  does  not  sanction  undue 
madness. 

A  much  higher  form  of  the  literature  of  ecstasy  than 
the  product  of  the  immoral  rites  of  Dionysus  or  the  mystic 
poetry  of  Persia  is  the  prophecy  as  it  was  known  and 
delivered  among  the  ancient  Hebrews.  Indeed,  prophecy 
is  the  ideal  form  of  the  literature  of  ecstasy  and  represents 
the  zenith  of  its  achievement.  It  is  the  emotional  verbal 
utterance  of  the  unconscious  of  the  poet,  who  is  usually  in 
a  state  of  ecstasy,  and  who,  as  passages  in  the  Bible  testify, 
receives  his  message  in  a  vision  or  dream.  The  act  of 
prophesying  was  even  contagious.  The  early  prophets 
were  like  dancing  dervishes  in  their  prophesying  and  in- 
fluenced others  to  do  as  they  did.  We  recall  how  Saul 
stripped  himself  naked.  The  Hebrew  word  prophecy 
means  utterance  and  the  idea  of  foretelling  the  future  was 
incidental  to  it.  If  the  idea  of  futurity  emanated  from 
prophets,  it  was  such  insight  as  any  gifted  person  may 
experience  when  he  notes  certain  facts  from  which  he 
can  predict  inevitable  results.  But  the  ecstatic  state  was 
always  associated  with  the  idea  of  prophecy,  the  only 
person,  according  to  the  account  of  the  Bible,  exempt  from 
this  state  being  Moses.  The  prophetic  state  was  not  allied 
to  divination  but  resulted  from  moral  and  aesthetic  in- 
spiration such  as  we  find  in  modern  poets.  When  the 
Bible  says,  God  spoke  to  the  prophet,  or  the  hand  of  God 
touched  him,  it  means  that  the  prophet  was  in  a  state  of 
ecstasy  due  to  a  highly  developed  moral  and  social  view- 
point. The  true  prophet's  ecstasy  was  not  accompanied 
by  immorality  or  superduced  by  drugs  or  physical  abuse. 
Music,  however,  was  at  one  time  used  to  produce  the 
prophetic  state.  The  aesthetic  mechanism  of  the  ancient 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ECSTASY  37 

prophets  was  no  different  from  that  of  any  great  poet  with 
a  message  of  modern  times.  Moses  Maimonides  in  his 
Guide  to  the  Perplexed  analyzes  the  ecstatic  state  of 
prophecy  and  his  analysis  may  be  applied  to  any  high 
form  of  poetic  inspiration. 

Prophecy  was,  according  to  Maimonides,  an  emanation 
sent  forth  to  man's  rational  faculty  and  then  to  his  imagin- 
ative faculty ;  it  consisted  in  the  most  perfect  development 
of  the  imaginative  faculty;  the  logical  and  imaginative 
faculties  had  to  be  balanced  in  the  prophet ;  he  overflowed 
with  the  frenzy  of  ecstasy  to  help  his  fellow-men  and 
could  not  rest  even  at  risk  of  personal  suffering;  he  had 
courage  and  intuition ;  he  reserved  his  message  in  a  dream 
or  a  vision. 

The  psychology  of  the  prophetic  inspiration  has  been 
studied  by  many  of  the  higher  critics  of  the  Bible.  One 
of  the  best  books  on  the  subject  is  The  Psychology  of 
Prophecy  by  Dr.  Jacob  H.  Kaplan,  Philadelphia  1908, 
(Julius  H.  Greenstone)  who  says: 

The  ecstasy  of  the  wild  and  mad  kind  was  seen  only  in 
the  early  days  of  Hebrew  prophecy,  when  wine  and  dance 
and  music  and  other  external  means  were  used  for  bring- 
ing about  this  state,  but  the  subdued  elevated  ecstasy  due 
to  religious  temperament  and  patriotic  fervor,  due  to 
constant  and  profound  contemplation,  was  certainly  the 
characteristic  of  the  later  prophets.  .  .  .  Ecstasy  is  usually 
the  spring  whence  all  the  other  prophetic  streams  flow. 

While  the  Greeks  mingled  reason  with  inspiration  to 
produce  poetry,  the  prophets  went  further,  and  inter- 
penetrated their  ecstasy  with  a  high  sense  of  social  justice. 
An  ecstatic  state,  with  a  keen  intellect,  a  high  moral  out- 
look, and  a  noble  social  ideal  characterized  the  prophet. 
His  state  of  ecstasy  was  due  to  this  highly  developed 


38     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

social  conscience.  He  was  not  so  much  concerned  with 
religious  rites  as  with  the  decline  of  the  nation's  ideals 
of  justice.  The  prophet  of  that  day  fulminated  against 
the  economic  evils  of  society.  He  was  possessed  of  an 
exalted  type  of  aesthetic  soul,  the  ecstasy  to  social  justice. 
No  literature  gives  us  such  types  of  men  who  rebuke 
unjust  kings  as  we  find  in  the  stories  of  Nathan  and 
David,  Elijah  and  Ahab,  Jeremiah  and  Hezekiah.  No 
literature  shows  us  such  courageous  types  as  Amos  and 
Isaiah.  They  were  not  flatterers,  these  men  who  risked 
their  lives  in  shouting  back  to  eastern  autocratic  monarchs 
their  iniquities.  They  did  not  say  what  society  or  public 
opinion  wanted  them  to  say  but  what  they  felt  was  their 
duty.  They  overflowed  not  with  the  immoral  and  insane 
ecstasy  of  the  rites  of  Dionysius,  but  the  ecstasy  of  the 
man  who  loves  his  neighbor  as  himself,  of  the  man  who 
would  not  have  the  rich  crush  the  poor,  of  the  man 
who  sought  kindness  for  the  stranger,  the  oppressed,  the 
widow,  the  fatherless. 

And  the  prophets,  in  spite  of  their  virulency,  produced 
the  highest  forms  of  artistic  beauty.  Not  all  the  revolu- 
tions of  opinions  and  changes  in  religious  beliefs  have 
made  them  obsolete.  Shaw  once  said,  substitute  the  word 
ideals  for  the  word  idols,  in  the  Bible,  and  you  have  mes- 
sages that  are  still  true. 

So  the  prophets  instead  of  being  miracle  performers, 
foretellers  of  the  future,  preachers  of  theology,  are  really 
poets  of  ecstasy,  with  a  social  message  revealed  in  a  dream. 
The  old  word  of  God,  in  the  form  of  a  high  social  ideal, 
to-day  is  still  making  prophets.  Shelley,  Ibsen  and  Ruskin 
have  done  work  that  is  akin  to  the  prophets  of  old ;  they 
have  given  us  works  of  art  inspired  by  a  state  of  ecstasy 
springing  from  the  possession  of  social  ideals.  Santayana 
rightly  regards  the  prophet,  one  who  portrays  the  ideals 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ECSTASY  39 

of  experience  and  destiny,  as  the.  greatest  poet.  (See 
Poetry  and  Religion.) 

Nor  did  the  prophets  of  old  sing  their  messages  in  artifi- 
cial form.  They  did  not  count  their  syllables  and  give  us 
metre,  though  they  indulged  in  parallelisms.  They  wrote 
in  rhythmical  prose.* 

The  prophets  had  a  true  conception  of  what  constituted 
a  high  form  of  poetry,  an  ecstatic  production  in  prose  with 
a  social  ideal  behind  it.  Ecstasy  was  the  first  condition  of 
their  poetry  but  it  was  not  pathological  as  with  monks 
who  tortured  their  bodies,  or  decadent  poets  who  resorted 
to  drugs. 

If  there  is  a  high  form  of  the  literature  of  ecstasy  it 
surely  is  that  in  which  the  ecstasy  of  humanitarianism  is 
described.  It  is  that  which  shows  a  man  with  a  highly 
developed  sense  of  social  justice,  who  is  making  sacrifices 
because  he  observes  the  misery  of  many  due  to  the 
privileged  few.  Don  Quixote  is  one  of  the  greatest  poems 
because  the  knight  wants  to  help  mankind,  even  though  he 
is  insane  and  never  recks  his  own  bruises,  but  persists  and 
is  laughed  at  by  all. 

In  speaking  of  the  literature  of  ecstasy,  something 
should  be  said  about  De  Quincey's  famous  distinction  of 
the  literature  of  knowledge  and  the  literature  of  power. 
He  defined  the  former  as  that  which  teaches  and  the  latter 
as  that  which  moves.  In  the  literature  of  power  he  in- 
cluded also  that  which  taught  by  means  of  passions,  de- 
sires and  emotions  and  that  which  had  its  field  of  action  in 
relation  to  the  great  moral  capacities  of  man.  The  litera- 
ture of  power,  according  to  De  Quincey,  includes  that 

*  "Hebrew  poetry  is 

Prose  with  a  sort  of  heightened  consciousness. 

'Ecstasy  affords 

The  occasion  and  expediency  determines  the  form.' " 

MARIANNE  MOORE  in  Others  (1916). 


40          THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

which  appeals  to  the  reason  and  understanding  through 
the  affections.  It  restores  "to  man's  mind  the  ideals  of 
justice,  of  hope,  of  truth,  of  mercy,  of  retribution."  De 
Quincey  included  under  the  literature  of  power,  prose  as 
well  as  verse,  fairy  tales  and  romances  as  well  as  tragedies 
and  epic  poems. 

The  question  is,  what  relation  is  there  between  De 
Quincey's  idea  of  the  literature  of  power  and  that  of  the 
literature  of  ecstasy.  Of  course  he  included  under  the 
literature  of  power  his  masterly  prose  poems;  also  all 
his  imaginative  writings.  Now,  the  Confessions  of  an 
Opium  Eater,  for  instance,  belongs  only  in  parts  to  the 
literature  of  ecstasy,  noticeably  in  the  dream  phantasies. 
By  the  literature  of  power  De  Quincey  meant  all  literature 
except  science.  The  only  illustration  of  the  literature  of 
knowledge  he  gives  is  Newton's  Principia,  and  the  marked 
characteristics  he  finds  in  this  as  in  all  literature  of 
knowledge  is  that  it  may  be  and  usually  is  superseded 
by  later  discoveries.  The  literature  of  power  in  his 
opinon  is  permanent;  this  statement  is  not  true  when 
we  think  of  the  many  imaginative  works  of  the  past  that 
have  no  longer  any  message  or  appeal  to  us. 

The  point  is  that  De  Quincey's  literature  of  power  in- 
cludes not  only  poetry  in  verse  and  prose,  but  the  entire 
field  of  general  literature  which  hovers  on  poetry,  or  in 
which  the  poetry  is  diffused  so  that  we  call  it  prose  litera- 
ture. The  literature  of  ecstasy  then  is  the  more  emotional 
literature  of  power,  that  section  of  it  where  the  ecstasy  is 
concentrated.  It  would  include  chiefly  the  impassioned 
prose  and  prose  phantasies  of  De  Quincey's  own  work. 

De  Quincey  was  no  art-for-art's-sake  man,  and  he 
recognized  the  importance  of  the  rational  and  the 
moral  element  in  the  sphere  of  the  literature  of  power. 

There  remains  a  distinction  between  power  and  ecstasy. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ECSTASY  41 

De  Quincey  does  not  identify  power  with  ecstasy  (a  term 
he  does  not  even  use)  even  though  he  demands  a  moving 
effect  in  the  literature  of  power.  He  does  not  contend 
that  the  emotion  should  be  concentrated  and  hold  com- 
plete sway  over  the  author.  His  literature  of  power 
would  include,  for  example,  all  good  novels  or  histories  in 
their  entirety.  To  us  only  those  portions  of  such  novels 
and  histories  where  the  passion  is  concentrated  belong 
to  the  literature  of  ecstasy  or  poetry. 

Literature  of  ecstasy  is  always  poetry,  literature  of 
power  is  not,  being  rather  the  equivalent  of  belles  lettres, 
reaching  the  heights  of  poetry  only  at  times. 

The  literature  of  ecstasy  is  all  writing,  in  verse  or  prose, 
wherever  an  emotional  atmosphere  hovers,  where  a  feeling 
is  concentrated,  and  hence  it  is  really  poetry.  Poetry  is 
the  language  of  ecstasy  and  ecstasy  is  that  posse'ssive 
faculty  of  the  imagination  capable  "of  projecting  itself  into 
the  very  consciousness  of  its  object,  and  again  of  being  so 
wholly  possessed  by  the  emotion  of  its  object  that  in  ex- 
pression it  takes  unconsciously  the  tone,  the  color  and 
the  temperature  thereof."  (James  Russell  Lowell:  The 
Function  of  the  Poet.  "The  Imagination."  P.  70.) 


CHAPTER  III 

ECSTASY,    NOT    RHYTHM,    ESSENTIAL    TO    POETRY 

ARISTOTLE  was  the  first  critic  who  placed  little  stress  on 
the  importance  of  metre  in  poetry.  If  the  critics  had  fol- 
lowed him,  instead  of  merely  referring  to  his  Poetics  and 
trying  to  discover  the  "borderland  between  prose  and 
poetry,"  there  probably  would  have  been  little  confusion 
as  to  what  is  poetry.  He  saw  there  was  poetry  in  the 
prose  mimes  of  Sophron  and  Xenarchus  and  in  the  dia- 
logues of  Socrates,  though  these  were  not  classified  as 
poetry.  Incidentally  he  found  little  poetry  in  Empedocles, 
who  in  spite  of  his  metre  was  primarily  a  physicist.  The 
passage  from  the  Poetics  is  worth  quoting  entire  for  it 
contains  the  nucleus  of  all  arguments  for  prose  poetry.  I 
quote  from  S.  H.  Butcher's  translation: 

For  there  is  no  common  term  we  could  apply  to  the 
mimes  of  Sophron  and  Xenarchus  and  the  Socratic  dia- 
logues on  the  one  hand ;  and,  on  the  other,  to  poetic  imita- 
tions in  iambic,  elegaic,  or  any  similar  metre.  People,  do, 
indeed,  add  the  word  "make"  or  "poet"  to  the  name  of  the 
metre,  and  speak  of  elegaic  poets,  or  epic  (that  is,  hexa- 
meter) poets,  as  if  it  were  not  the  imitation  that  makes  the 
poet,  but  the  verse  that  entitles  them  all  indiscriminately 
to  the  name.*  Even  when  a  treatise  on  medicine  or 
natural  science  is  brought  out  in  verse,  the  name  of  poet  is 
by  custom  given  to  the  author ;  and  yet  Homer  and  Empe- 
docles  have  nothing  in  common  but  the  metre,  so  that  it 
would  be  right  to  call  the  one  poet,  the  other  physicist 
rather  than  poet.  On  the  same  principle,  even  if  a  writer 
in  his  poetic  imitation  were  to  combine  all  metres,  as 

*  The  italics  are  mine. 

42 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     43 

Chaeremon  did  in  his  Centaur,  which  is  a  medley  com- 
posed of  metres  of  all  kinds,  we  should  bring  him  too 
under  the  general  term  poet. 

He  also  says :  "The  Poet  or  maker  should  be  the  maker 
of  plots  rather  than  of  verse ;  since  he  is  a  poet  because  he 
imitates,  and  what  he  imitates  is  actions." 

Aristotle's  idea  that  metre  is  an  unessential  element  in 
determining  poetry  has  never  really  taken  root  in  literary 
criticism.  It  was  voiced  by  men  like  Erasmus  and  Savon- 
arola, and  was  again  restated  by  the  Italian  critic  Castele- 
vetro,  who  in  his  commentary  on  Aristotle's  Poetics 
(1570)  said  that  verse  is  not  the  essence  of  poetry,  that  it 
does  not  distinguish  it  but  clothes  it,  and  that  therefore 
matter  and  not  metre  is  the  test  of  poetry.  He  believes 
like  Aristotle,  that  metre  aids  poetry,  but  that  the  imita- 
tion or  creation  itself  determines  it. 

George  Saintsbury  in  his  scholarly  and  fascinating 
History  of  Criticism  in  Europe  cannot  forgive  Aristotle 
for  this  "pestilent  heresy,"  as  he  calls  it.  He  severely 
berates  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  for  having  supported 
it.  He  attacks  all  the  critics  who  -  countenance  it.  He 
adulates  Dante's  treatise  De  Vulgari  Eloquentia  as  an 
antidote  to  the  heresy,  because  Dante  wants  the  rhythm 
(as  well  as  the  diction)  of  poetry  to  be  different  from 
that  of  prose. 

But  we  are  learning  to-day  that  metre  is  not  only  an 
unnecessary  element  in  poetry,  but  often  an  artificial, 
hampering  encumbrance,  frequently  vitiating  the  poetical 
quality  of  a  poem. 

Yet  Professor  Saintsbury  has  given  us  in  his  History  of 
English  Prose  Rhythm  some  of  the  finest  emotional  and 
rhythmical  passages  from  English  prose  writers.  He 
chose  the  selections  primarily  for  their  rhythm  and  not 
for  their  emotional  qualities,  yet  most  of  the  passages  are 


44          THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

poems.  His  book  practically  convinces  one  that  nearly  all 
the  great  English  writers  of  prose  wrote  not  only  rhyth- 
mical prose,  but  emotional  or  ecstatic  prose,  or  poetry. 
Professor  Saintsbury  finds  the  essence  of  prose  rhythm, 
in  variety  and  divergence,  and  he  divides  prose  into  three 
kinds,  according  to  the  rhythm.  These  are  hybrid  verse- 
prose,  pure  highly  rhythmed  prose,  and  prose  in  general. 
In  the  first  class  he  includes  much  of  the  Bible,  especially 
where  the  parallelisms  are  present,  Anglo  Saxon  poetry, 
Ossian,  Blake's  Prophetic  Books  and  Walt  Whitman.  He 
no  doubt  would  include  free  verse  here.  But  this  so- 
called  "hybrid  verse  prose"  is  really  highly  rhythmed 
prose  generally  arranged  in  verse  form.  There  is  no  real 
distinction  between  the  two  forms. 

Poetry  in  prose,  however,  does  not  depend  on  the 
rhythm.  The  only  effect  on  the  reader  of  reading  the 
chapter  on  "Rhythm  as  the  Essential  Fact  of  Poetry"  in 
Professor  Gummere's  book  The  Beginnings  of  Poetry  is 
to  convince  him  that  the  learning  amassed  there  does  not 
prove  the  professor's  thesis.  For  example  Gummere  cites 
Bagehot's  statement,  "the  exact  line  which  separates  grave 
novels  in  verse  like  Aylwier's  Field  or  Enoch  Arden  from 
grave  novels  not  in  verse  like  Silas  Marner  and  Adam 
Bedc,  we  own  we  cannot  draw  with  any  confidence,"  and 
thus  comments:  "Adam  Bede  remains  prose,  and  Enoch 
Arden  is  commonly  set  down  as  poetry  and  there  an  end." 
This  impatient  remark  does  not  do  away  with  the  fact  that 
the  story  of  Hetty's  troubles  after  she  had  met  Arthur 
Dimmesdale,  and  the  scene  of  the  interview  with  her  in 
prison  by  Dinah  Morris  are  two  examples  that  fulfill 
every  definition  of  poetry,  even  to  irregular  rhythm. 
Some  of  the  free  verse  poets  have  given  us  compositions 
made  up  of  the  outbursts  of  people  in  distress,  with  their 
story  in  simple  language  like  Hetty  Sorrel's  tale. 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     45 

My  contention  then  is  that  what  decides  whether  a  com- 
position is  poetry  is  not  the  rhythm  but  the  ecstasy.  The 
academic  critics  have  found  an  argument  for  rhythm  in 
the  fact  that  when  a  man  is  moved,  the  expression  of  his 
emotions  tends  towards  rhythmical  language.  This  is 
certainly  very  often  true,  but  the  rhythmical  character  of 
language  in  these  cases  is  entirely  different  from  that  in 
verse,  for  in  verse  you  have  a  patterned  regular  rhythm 
obeying  an  artificial  law  of  accents,  a  continued  series  of 
rise  and  ebb  of  the  voice  that  must  not  break  down  for 
hundreds  and  even  thousands  of  monotonous  lines.  In 
the  rhythm  of  the  natural  language  of  emotion  you  have 
no  rules  or  fetters  on  how  the  accents  should  be  distrib- 
uted. You  have  rhythmical  and  unrhythmical  lines, 
regular  and  irregular  arrangements  of  accents,  all  thrown 
together.  No  pattern  is  present,  and  no  uniformity  or 
similarity  of  any  kind  is  kept  up.  This  is  the  language  of 
poetic  prose. 

If  I  say  that  rhythm  is  not  necessary  in  poetry,  I  merely 
mean  that  no  patterned  or  strong  rhythm  is  necessary,  for 
all  prose  is  more  or  less  irregularly  rhythmical.  Often 
the  prose  rhythm  is  more  marked  than  the  rhythm  of 
metre,  as  you  may  find  out  by  comparing  passages  from 
Whitman  or  Pater  with  let  us  say  some  of  the  blank 
verse  of  Wordsworth.  Professor  Patterson  claimed  that 
all  prose  has  rhythm,  and  he  called  prose  "syncopated 
rhythm."  He  rightly  pointed  out  that  passages  of 
prose  have  a  rhythm  which  in  nowise  differs  from  the 
rhythm  of  free  verse.  He  refuses  to  regard  free  verse, 
as  some  seek  to  do,  as  a  third  medium  for  poetic  ex- 
pression. He  shows  that  the  arrangement  of  free  verse 
into  irregular  lines  merely  calls  attention  to  the  rhythms. 
All  prose  may  be  arranged  as  free  verse  and  all  free 
verse  as  prose.  Since  such  is  the  case,  all  literature  of 


46          THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

ecstasy  in  prose  has  rhythm  besides  ecstasy  and  should 
certainly  be  called  poetry.  Dr.  Patterson  made  one  error, 
however,  to  which  Dr.  Gary  F.  Jacob  calls  attention  in 
her  Foundations  and  Nature  of  Verse.  Prose  may  have 
rhythm  but  it  has  no  continuity  of  progress  in  the 
rhythms,  which  must  eventually  break  down;  it  has  no 
intention  of  continuous  rhythmic  flow.  But  poetry,  I 
urge,  may  exist  in  prose  without  a  continuity  of  progress 
of  rhythms  or  even  without  rhythm  at  all — (after  all,  in 
spite  of  Dr.  Patterson,  there  is  unrhythmical  prose). 

The  view  that  rhythm  is  vital  to  poetry  is  fallacious. 
Accentuation  at  unequal  intervals  of  time  no  more 
creates  or  heightens  poetic  fervor  than,  as  was  formerly 
supposed,  measured  stress  on  syllables  did  so.  If  the 
prime  motive  of  an  unrhythmical  prose  work,  in  whole 
or  part,  is  the  communication  of  an  emotion  or  the 
ecstatic  treatment  of  an  idea,  that  production  is  em- 
phatically a  poem;  or  at  least  some  portions  of  it  are 
separately  entitled  to  that  name.  If  you  deny  it  you  will 
be  compelled  to  maintain  that  the  able  unrhythmical  prose 
translations  we  have  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  poets  contain 
no  poetry.  In  fact  the  best  way  to  judge  if  a  composition 
in  verse  is  poetry  is,  as  Goethe  and  Hearn  said,  to  translate 
it  into  the  prose  of  another  language ;  if  poetic  emotions 
are  not  then  revealed,  rest  assured  that  they  were  never 
present  in  the  original  work.  When  the  rhyme,  metre 
and  rhythm  have  been  abstracted  and  the  poetic  fire  still 
glows  almost  undiminished,  we  have  the  best  proof,  first 
that  its  existence  did  not  depend  upon  the  use  of  verbal 
measures  and  sounds,  and  secondly,  that  the  poetry  is  not 
lost  even  when  transferred  into  the  prose  of  another 
tongue. 

The  first  question  the  reader  will  now  ask  is:  "Well, 
what  then  constitutes  the  difference  between  prose  and 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     47 

poetry  if  you  take  away  the  distinguishing  feature  of 
rhythm?"  And  some  misguided  critics  assert  that  the 
term  prose  poetry  is  a  hybrid  and  a  contradiction  in  terms. 
The  embarrassment  of  the  former  and  the  misconception 
of  the  latter  will  disappear  if  they  remember  that  the 
opposite  of  prose  is  not  poetry,  but  verse  or  metre.  As 
Coleridge  said,  science  is  the  proper  antithesis  of  poetry. 
An  unemotional  presentation  of  dull  facts  is,  however, 
the  real  antithesis. 

Poetry  is  absolutely  independent  of  any  adornment  it 
may  be  given,  such  as  rhyme,  metre,  or,  as  I  am  especially 
trying  to  show,  rhythm ;  even  though  it  is  true  that  emo- 
tional language  may  tend  to  become  rhythmical.  Verse 
is  simply  an  ordering  of  words  so  that  the  modulation 
by  the  voice  especially  attracts  the  ear  by  the  regularity 
of  stress.  We  have  stories,  dramas  and  essays  in  different 
measures  of  verse  just  as  we  have  them  in  prose.  De- 
scription, narration,  exposition,  even  argument  and  ex- 
clamation, appear  in  verse  as  well  as  in  prose.  There 
are,  as  it  has  always  been  recognized,  innumerable  products 
in  verse  that  from  the  nature  of  their  contents  are  desti- 
tute of  the  attributes  of  poetry.  Humorous  and  didactic 
efforts,  mere  jokes  or  commonplace  sermons,  do  not  be- 
come poetical  because  they  are  put  in  metre  or  rhythm. 
Abstract  philosophy,  concrete  science  and  barren  theology 
remain  arid  and  unemotional  discourses  even  in  the  epics 
of  Dante  and  Milton.  A  bare  and  not  particularly  inter- 
esting statement  of  facts  or  a  procession  of  dull  and 
platitudinous  ideas  is,  even  in  verse,  anything  but  poetry. 
In  the  range  of  the  world's  metrical  writings  the  poems 
are  few  and  far  between. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  has  always  been  recognized  that 
there  were  prose  compositions  that  partook  of  the  nature 
of  poetry  or  were  replete  with  poetical  parts.  It  was  diffi- 


48     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

cult  to  classify  this  literature,  for  the  extreme  beauty  arjd 
emotion  which  pervaded  it  lifted  it  above  ordinary  prose 
and  yet  because  of  the  absence  of  measure  it  was  not 
classified  as  poetry.  The  first  English  critic  who  per- 
ceived that  the  authors  of  such  work  were  really  poets 
and  should  be  designated  by  their  appropriate  name  was 
Sir  Philip  Sidney.  He  showed  that  verse  was  but  an 
ornament  and  did  not  make  poetry,  and  that  there  were 
many  poets,  among  whom  he  named  Xenophon,  who  never 
versified.  Shelley,  however,  has  given  the  widest  vogue 
to  the  feeling  that  the  distinction  between  poets  and  prose 
writers  was  a  vulgar  error.  He  maintained  that  philoso- 
phers like  Bacon  and  Plato,  historians  like  Herodotus, 
Plutarch  and  Livy,  authors  of  revolutions  in  opinion  such 
as  Jesus  and  Rousseau,  were  poets. 

Coleridge  held  that  the  object  of  poetry  was  to  com- 
municate pleasure,  and  remarked:  "But  the  communica- 
tion of  pleasure  may  be  the  immediate  object  of  a  work 
not  metrically  composed;  and  that  object  may  have  been 
in  a  high  degree  attained,  as  in  novels  and  romance.  Would 
then  the  mere  superaddition  of  metre,  with  or  without 
rhyme,  entitle  these  to  the  name  of  poems  ?  The  answer 
is,  that  nothing  can  permanently  please,  which  does  not 
contain  in  itself  the  reason  why  it  is  so,  and  not  otherwise. 
.  .  .  The  writings  of  Plato,  and  Bishop  Taylor,  and  the 
Theoria  Sacra  of  Burnet,  furnish  undeniable  proof  that 
poetry  of  the  highest  kind  may  last  without  metre,  and 
even  without  the  contradistinguishing  objects  of  a  poem." 

"There  are  also  prose  poets,"  said  Emerson  in  his  essay 
on  "Poetry  and  Imagination"  in  Letters  and  Social  Aims. 
"Thomas  Taylor,  the  Platonist,  for  instance,  is  really  a 
better  man  of  imagination,  a  better  poet,  or  perhaps  I 
should  say,  a  better  feeder  to  a  poet,  than  any  man  be- 
tween Milton  and  Wordsworth.  Thomas  Moore  had 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     49 

the  magnanimity  to  say,  'If  Burke  and  Bacon  were  not 
poets  (measured  lines  not  being  necessary  to  constitute 
one),  he  did  not  know  what  poetry  meant.'  And  every 
good  reader  will  easily  recall  expressions  or  passages  in 
works  of  pure  science  which  have  given  him  the  same 
pleasure  which  he  seeks  in  professed  poets." 

Emerson  also  said  he  heard  the  Germans  considered  the 
author  of  Tristram  Shandy  a  greater  poet  than  Cowper, 
and  that  Goldsmith  was  a  poet  more  because  of  the  Vicar 
of  Wakefield  than  the  Deserted  Village. 

Hazlitt  stated  that  there  were  some  prose  works  that 
approached  poetry  without  absolutely  being  poetry,  in- 
stancing Robinson  Crusoe,  Pilgrim's  Progress,  and  the 
Decameron. 

Heine  spoke  of  Don  Quixote  as  a  poem.  Fredrick 
Schlegel  called  Wilhelm  Meister  poetry.  Brandes  regards 
Lord  Beaconsfield  a  poet.  Matthew  Arnold  character- 
ized Chateaubriand,  Senancour  and  Guerin  poets.  Balzac 
considered  himself  a  poet  and  Ibsen  in  mentioning  his 
prose  dramas  often  used  the  word  "poems." 

The  habit  of  calling  productions  in  metre  or  rhythm 
poetry  has  been  so  strongly  ingrained  in  us  that  we  de- 
nominate every  lengthy  performance  in  verse  a  poem  in 
toto.  Before  Poe,  Coleridge  said  that  "a  poem  of  any 
length  neither  can  be  nor  ought  to  be  all  poetry."  Poe  gave 
us  the  reasons  for  this  proposition  and  demonstrated  to  us 
that  a  long  epic  poem  is  but  a  series  of  short  poems  con- 
nected by  uninspired  passages  in  metre.  The  same  thing 
may  be  said  of  literary  verse  performances  of  moderate 
length.  To  those  who  object  to  using  the  word  "poem"  in 
connection  with  any  prose  composition  one  may  reply  that 
these,  like  verse  productions,  are  also  often  made  up  of 
poetical  parts  here  and  there;  they  simply  lack  regular 


50    THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

rhythm  and  this  is  not  a  sufficient  line  of  demarcation  as 
to  what  constitutes  poetry  and  what  does  not. 

There  are  many  short  stories  in  verse  which  are  known 
as  poems  while  there  are  many  poetical  tales  and  sketches 
in  prose  which  no  one  finds  to  be  poetry,  although  they 
often  contain  more  of  it  than  many  specimens  in  measure. 
I  think  Poe's  Eleonora  with  its  description  of  the  Valley 
of  Many  Colored  Grass  and  Hawthorne's  Haunted  Mind 
are  greater  poems,  though  in  prose,  than  most  of  Holmes' 
and  Bryant's  verse  poems  are.  I  see  no  reason  why  we 
should  not  designate  as  poetry,  prose  tales  where  ecstasy 
and  emotion  predominate.  Kipling's  Brushwood  Boy  or 
Bret  Harte's  Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat  is  as  poetical,  I  be- 
lieve, as  any  tale  in  Longfellow's  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn. 
The  same  laws  of  emotional  appeal  are  working  in  the 
one  as  in  the  other;  a  similar  artistic  stamp  is  printed  on 
all  these  stories.  In  fact,  Longfellow's  tales  are  inferior 
in  the  quality  and  quantity  of  poetry  to  the  stories  speci- 
fied. His  compositions  could  easily  be  arranged  in  prose 
and  the  stories  of  Kipling  or  Harte  could  be  transposed 
into  metrical  verse.  The  transfer  would  not  affect  the 
poetry  in  either  of  them. 

It  is  a  confused  system  of  literary  classification  which 
does  not  permit  calling  these  tales  of  Harte  and  Kipling 
poetry,  but  crowns  the  same  writers'  doggerel  verses  like 
The  Heathen  Chinee  and  Fuzzy  Wuzzy  with  the  title 
"poems." 

To  bring  sharply  before  the  reader's  mind  the  idea  that 
a  piece  in  verse  is  often  not  poetry  and  that  a  prose  passage 
frequently  is  a  poem,  I  will  quote  at  random  two  passages. 

One  is  from  a  work  that  is  rich  with  poetry  and  written 
by  one  of  England's  greatest  poets  and  yet  the  particular 
section,  though  in  metre,  is  but  a  dry  statement  of  facts. 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     51 

I  quote  from  Wordsworth's  Michael,  one  of  the  finest 
things  in  English  literature,  yet  unpoetical  in  the  first  part : 

Upon  the  forest  side  in  Grasmere  Vale 
There  dwelt  a  Shepherd,  Michael  was  his  name. 
An  old  man  stout  of  heart,  and  strong  of  limb. 
His  bodily  frame  had  been  from  youth  to  age 
Of  an  unusual  strength ;  his  mind  was  keen, 
And  in  his  Shepherd  calling  he  was  prompt 
And  watchful  more  than  ordinary  men. 

Here  are  unpoetical  lines  which  might  have  been  writ- 
ten in  prose,  but  Wordsworth  had  to  give  us  some  pre- 
liminary information  so  that  we  could  follow  his  story. 
Incidentally,  he  has  the  reputation  for  having  much  prosy 
material  in  the  body  of  his  work. 

The  other  passage  I  quote  is  purposely  a  translation 
from  a  foreign  novel  and  yet  it  has  not  lost  any  of  its 
poetry.  The  paragraph,  of  which  I  give  part,  is  a  poem 
and  part  of  a  larger  one  in  prose.  It  is  from  D'Annunzio's 
Triumph  of  Death  and  describes  the  music  in  Wagner's 
"Tristan  and  Isolde" : 


And  in  the  orchestra,  spoke  every  eloquence,  sang 
every  joy,  wept  every  misery,  that  the  human  voice  had 
ever  expressed.  The  melodies  emerged  from  the  sym- 
phonic depths,  developing,  interrupting,  superposing, 
mingling,  melting  into  one  another,  dissolving,  disappear- 
ing to  again  appear.  A  more  and  more  restless  poignant 
anxiety  passed  over  all  the  instruments  and  expressed  a 
continual  and  ever  vain  effort  to  attain  the  inaccessible. 
In  the  impetuosity  of  the  chromatic  progressions  there 
was  the  mad  pursuit  of  a  happiness  that  eluded  every 
grasp,  although  it  shone  ever  so  near,  etc. 

I  shall  show  more  fully  that  our  definitions  of  what 
is  poetry  and  what  is  a  poem  have  been  faulty.  The  error 


52    THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

is  so  perceptible  that  it  is  surprising  that  so  few  critics 
have  detected  it.  Meanwhile  I  will  give  my  definitions: 

Poetry  is  not  a  department  of  literature  in  the  sense 
that  the  novel  or  the  essay  or  the  drama  is,  but  is  an 
atmosphere  which  bathes  literature  whenever  ecstasy  and 
emotion  are  present.  It  is  not  a  distinct  division  of  art 
as  literature,  music  or  painting  is,  for  poetry  is  the  very 
essence  of  all  these  arts  whether  it  is  transmitted  by  words, 
sounds  or  colors.  It  is  the  ecstatic  emotional  spirit  which 
pervades  all  good  literature  (or  any  of  the  arts)  whether 
in  verse  or  prose,  in  their  finest  parts.  It  is  an  aesthetic 
quality  which  gives  tone  to  a  literary  work  or  any  portion 
or  portions  of  it.  It  m-ay  exist  without  figures  of  speech, 
rhyme,  metre  or  rhythm*  Its  most  natural  language  is 
prose  or  free  verse.  Let  us  have  no  more  such  classifica- 
tion of  literature  as  fiction,  drama,  essay,  criticism,  poetry, 
etc.  There  is  fiction  in  verse  and  there  is  prose  fiction; 
there  are  verse  dramas  and  prose  plays,  etc.,  and  any  of 
these  may  be  steeped  in  poetry.  However,  the  customary 
lyric  verse  may  be  comprised  under  the  heading  of  poetry 
not  because  of  the  measure,  but  on  account  of  the  poetic 
emotion  that  usually  characterizes  it.  Let  us  also  not 
speak  of  the  arts  like  music,  painting,  sculpture  and  poetry 
when  instead  of  the  last  we  mean  literature,  for  poetry  is 
a  quality  of  all  the  arts  including  literature.  Poetry  is 
the  spirit  of  ecstasy  and  emotion  which  pervades  the  arts 
like  music,  painting,  sculpture  and  literature,  and  hence 
it  may  be  found  in  every  branch  of  literature  whether  in 
verse  or  prose,  like  the  drama,  fiction  and  the  essay. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  define  what  a  poem  is. 

*  "Poetry  is  the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  all  knowledge." 
Wordsworth.  "The  atmosphere  wherein  all  the  arts  exist  is 
poetry."  Wilhem  A.  Ambros :  The  Boundaries  of  Music  and 
Poetry. 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     53 

Critics  are  agreed  that  it  must  consist  of  the  artistic  ex- 
pression of  words  which  arouse  the  reader's  emotion,  but 
they  have  insisted  that  these  words  be  rhythmically  ar- 
ranged. I  think  if  the  latter  limitation  is  withdrawn,  all 
our  confusion  as  to  what  is  a  poem  will  disappear.  A 
poem  is  any  literary  composition,  whether  in  verse  or 
prose,  which  as  a  whole  is  an  imaginative  creation,  a 
vehicle  of  emotion,  an  expression  of  ecstasy;  or  that  por- 
tion .  or  every  portion  of  such  a  composition  where  the 
emotion  or  ecstasy  has  been  concentrated.  It  does  not 
follow  that  the  work  as  a  whole  is  necessarily  poetry.  Its 
most  natural  language  is  prose  or  free  verse. 

Poems  may  therefore  be  found  in  imaginative  philo- 
sophical works  like  Plato's  Symposium,  Phaedrus,  Re- 
public and  other  dialogues,  Bacon's  Essays,  Schopen- 
hauer's World  as  Will  and  Idea,  Nietzsche's  Thus  Spake 
Zarathustra,  Emerson's  Essays,  in  critical  works  like 
Pater's  Renaissance,  Ruskin's  Modern  Painters,  Wilde's 
Intentions,  in  histories  like  Thucydides's  Peloponnesian 
War  and  Carlyle's  French  Revolution,  in  autobiographies 
like  St.  Augustine's  Confessions  and  Rousseau's  Confes- 
sions, in  letters  like  Madame  Lespinasse's  and  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing's, in  diaries  like  those  of  Amiel,  in  novels  by  Balzac, 
Dickens,  Hawthorne,  Hardy,  Tolstoy,  etc. 

Some  of  the  best  poetry  is  found  in  the  world's  prose 
fiction.  For  example,  The  Scarlet  Letter  has  as  good 
poetry  in  it  as  the  Aeneid.  Like  the  old  epic,  it  is  made 
up  of  great  poems  connected  by  extended  portions  that 
belongs  to  general  literature,  sections  that  have  not 
enough  emotion  to  be  regarded  as  poetry  nor  are  yet 
arid  or  passionless  enough  to  be  termed  science.  But 
the  story  of  Hester  Prynne  is  poetry  as  truly  as  the  tale  of 
Dido,  and  undoubtedly  you  cannot  refuse  the  appellation 
poetry  to  the  chapter  in  Hawthorne's  novel  which  de- 


54     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

scribes  how  Arthur  Dimmesdale  gets  up  in  the  pulpit  and 
confesses  to  the  congregation  his  part  in  Hester  Prynne's 
guilt.  The  Aeneid  is  really  a  novel  in  verse. 

We  are  not  often  moved  by  metrical  writing  as  we  are 
by  the  last  part  of  the  chapter  in  David  Copper  field  en- 
titled, "A  Greater  Loss,"  where  we  see  the  agonizing  grief 
of  the  elder  Pegotty  and  of  Ham  over  the  elopement  of 
Emily,  Ham's  betrothed.  You  recall  the  love  scene  telling 
of  the  meeting  of  Richard  and  Lucy  in  Meredith's  novel 
The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel,  only  as  poetry.  This  is 
how  the  passage,  which  being  rhythmical  besides,  begins: 

Golden  lie  the  meadows;  golden  run  the  streams;  red 
gold  is  on  the  pine-stems.  The  sun  is  coming  down  to 
earth,  and  walks  the  fields  and  the  waters. 

The  sun  is  coming  down  to  earth,  and  the  fields  and 
the  waters  shout  to  him  golden  shouts.  He  comes  and  his 
heralds  run  before  him,  and  touch  the  leaves  of  oaks  and 
the  planes  and  the  beeches  lucid  green,  and  the  pine  stems 
redder  gold ;  leaving  the  brightest  footprints  upon  thickly- 
weeded  barks,  where  the  foxglove's  last  upper-bells  in- 
cline, and  the  bramble  shoots  wander  amid  moist  rich 
herbage,  etc. 

If  the  sphere  of  poetry  has  thus  been  widened  to  in- 
clude many  compositions  in  prose  formerly  excluded,  it 
has,  on  the  other  hand,  been  narrowed  by  omitting  much 
in  verse  that  was  formerly  admitted  into  the  domain  of 
the  Muses.  I  refer  especially  to  the  whole  body  of  un- 
ecstatic  philosophical,  scientific  and  theological  discourses 
in  verse  which  usurp  a  name  not  belonging  to  them;  I 
refer  to  much  descriptive  and  narrative  verse  that  lacks 
the  poetic  glow;  I  would  exclude  nearly  all  of  the  so- 
called  "light,"  "occasional"  and  "humorous"  verse.  Win- 
now the  voluminous  verse  writers  and  but  a  modicum 
of  poetry  remains. 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     55 

Critics  as  a  rule  agree  that  neither  rhythm  nor  metre 
makes  a  literary  performance  poetical  if  the  author's  soul 
does  not  enter  into  the  work,  but  they  refuse  to 
countenance  the  corollary  that  when  unrhythmical  prose 
is  used  as  a  medium  for  the  singer's  poetical  sentiments 
the  result  should  also  be  called  poetry.  It  is  an  easy  matter 
to  arrange  any  fine  poetical  prose  in  blank  verse  or  irregu- 
lar rhythmical  lines.  Just  a  few  slight  verbal  changes 
are  necessary.  The  new  product  then  fulfills  the  condi- 
tions of  the  old  theory  which  demands  metre  or  rhythm. 
Does  it  become  poetry  because  of  these  unimportant 
changes?  No,  these  do  not  work  so  miraculous  an  effect 
upon  the  writing.  It  acquires  no  higher  qualities  than 
it  had  before  in  prose. 

I  hence  fail  to  see  why  the  Idylls  of  the  King  should 
be  alone  called  poems  and  not  also  parts  of  Malory's 
Morte  d' Arthur,  which  Tennyson  paraphrased  in  blank 
verse.  Malory  has,  however,  been  deemed  a  poet  by  some 
critics  and  any  one  who  will  read  the  lament  over  the 
death  of  Sir  Lancelot  will  not  begrudge  the  author  that 
title.  One  admits  that  the  Tales  of  La  Fontaine  and 
Chaucer's  Canterbury  Tales  are  very  rich  in  poetry,  but 
why  say  that  the  original  prose  stories  which  these  poets 
often  re-tell  in  verse  (undoubtedly  improving  them  by 
their  own  genius)  are  not?  And  who  will  deny  the  state- 
ment that  the  best  of  Scott's  novels,  say  The  Heart  of 
Midlothian,  contains  as  much,  if  not  more,  poetry  than 
some  of  his  novels  in  verse  like  the  Lady  of  the  Lake? 
Even  in  his  day  the  reviewers  saw  that  there  was  no  dif- 
ference between  Scott's  verse  and  prose  stories  as  far  as 
the  quality  of  the  poetry  was  concerned ;  indeed  they  saw 
that  there  was  more  of  the  divine  afflatus  in  the  latter  than 
there  was  in  the  former.  In  fact  the  Quarterly  Review 
referred  to  Scott's  novels  as  poems. 


56     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

One  may  even  say  that  the  great  Shakespeare  found 
in  the  dramas,  tales  and  chronicles  that  were  his  sources 
some  of  the  poetry  we  note  in  his  plays.  Especially  is 
this  true  in  regard  to  his  use  of  Plutarch.  Brandes  has 
pointed  out  that  Julius  C&sar  is  found  in  every  detail  in 
Plutarch's  Lives  of  Caesar,  Brutus  and  Mark  Anthony. 
The  dramatist  followed  the  biographer  point  for  point, 
repeating  word  for  word  passages  of  North's  translation, 
accepting  the  characters  as  they  stood  there  and  repeating 
all  the  leading  incidents.  If  Julius  Ccesar  contains  poetry, 
as  it  certainly  does  in  abundance,  then  surely  those  lives 
of  Plutarch  which  were  followed  by  Shakespeare  must  also 
possess  it. 

Nor  can  I  understand  why  the  parts  of  Shakespeare's 
plays  which  are  in  prose  and  are  often  superior  to  many 
portions  in  blank  verse  should  also  not  be  called  poetry. 
Take  the  first  scene  of  the  fifth  act  of  Macbeth,  where 
Lady  Macbeth  is  walking  in  her  sleep.  The  entire  section, 
though  prose,  is  one  of  the  most  poetic  pieces  in  the  entire 
drama.  If  the  passage  had  been  written  in  blank  verse 
it  could  not  have  been  improved.  The  poetry  is  there  in 
the  scene  itself  and  not  in  any  possible  metre.  Other 
lines  might  be  cited,  like  Hamlet's  remarks  to  Guildenstern, 
who  tried  to  pry  out  his  secret  and  play  upon  him  as  upon 
a  pipe;  or  his  reflections  on  what  a  wonderful  piece  of 
work  was  man ;  or  his  comments  over  Yorick's  skull.  All 
these  selections  are  in  impassioned  prose  and  are  as  much 
entitled  to  the  rank  of  poetry  as  are  most  of  the  blank 
verse  of  the  drama.  Hamlet's  advice  to  the  players 
though  art  criticism,  and  prose,  is  so  lit  up  with  poetic 
glamor  that  it  deserves  the  name  poetry  more  than  the 
metrical  version  of  some  of  the  moral  commonplaces  in 
the  play. 

One  may  ask  various  questions  of  the  critic  who  clings 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     57 

to  the  old  definition  that  metre  or  rhythm  must  accompany 
poetry.  Why  should  Conrad's  supreme  poetic  description 
of  a  storm  at  sea  in  his  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus  not  be 
called  a  poem,  when  you  designate  by  this  word  Virgil's 
famous  description  in  dactylic  hexameters  in  the  first  book 
of  the  Aeneidf  Powerful  and  deservedly  renowned  as 
the  Virgil  passage  is,  I  venture  to  say  that  it  does  not  as  a 
poem  rank  higher  than  some  of  Conrad's  descriptions. 
One  would  wish  to  be  informed  where  the  story  of 
ingratitude  in  Balzac's  novel  Pere  Goriot  is  any  the 
less  poetical  than  that  of  Shakespeare's  verse  play  King 
Lear.  Why  is  the  succession  of  ideas  in  Browning's  Rabbi 
Ben  Ezra  called  poetry  and  not,  let  us  say,  Emerson's  essay 
on  Self -Reliance?  Why  call  the  descriptions  of  battles  by 
Homer  poems,  but  not  those  of  Stendhal  or  Tolstoy  or 
Zola  in  Le  Chartreuse  de  Par  me  or  War  and  Peace  or 
Le  Debacle?  And  how  can  you  on  any  pretence  refuse 
to  include  in  the  category  of  poetry  De  Quincey's  famous 
prose  poems  The  Dream  Fugue  and  Levana  and  Our 
Ladies  of  Sorrow? 

Since  the  critics  would  not  admit  that  any  unrhythmical 
prose  is  poetry,  it  is  little  wonder  that  Baudelaire  founded 
as  a  distinct  and  conscious  form  the  composition  he  called 
"poem  in  prose."  We  are  told  by  his  translator,  Mr. 
Sturm,  that  he  had  dreamed  in  his  days  of  ambition  "of  a 
miracle  of  poetical  prose,  musical  without  rhythm  and 
without  rhyme."  He  understood  and  proved  that  rhythm 
was  not  necessary  to  poetry.  He  derived  the  idea  of  this 
separate  form  from  Poe  and  Bertrand.  He  has  been  fol- 
lowed by  Turgenev,  who  left  us  some  prose  poems  which 
he  called  Senilia.  The  reader  may  recall  the  love  scene  in 
The  House  of  Gentlefolk  and  the  concluding  chapters  of 
Rudin  and  Fathers  and  Sons,  which  are  all  prose  poems. 
Gorki  has  written  some  exquisite  prose  poems.  One  of 


58     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

them,  The  March  of  Man,  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
poems  ever  written.  (Translated  in  The  Cosmopolitan 
for  July,  1905.) 

Really,  every  great  literary  man  is  a  poet,  for  he  is  con- 
stantly occupied  with  ecstasy  and  human  emotions.  Do 
you  think  Hugo  was  a  poet  only  when  he  chanted  in  verse 
and  ceased  being  one  when  he  wrote  Les  Miserables  or 
Notre  Dame  de  Paris?  It  is  not  necessary  to  use  the 
old  poetical  machinery  of  rhythm,  or  metaphors  or  similes, 
or  apostrophe  or  personification  or  any  other  figure  of 
speech ;  one  may  dispense  with  allusions  to  mythology  or 
the  use  of  any  but  current  expressions  and  idioms;  one 
may  write  almost  as  one  talks ;  and  poetry  may  neverthe- 
less be  produced.  When  Macpherson  in  the  eighteenth 
century  and  Chateaubriand  in  the  early  part  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  gave  us  in  imitation  of  the  old  epics  the 
long  prose  poems  Fingal  and  Les  Martyrs,  respectively, 
they  sinned  artistically  only  because  they  were  imitators 
and  were  stilted  and  rhetorical.  These  books  contain 
excellent  poetry  in  prose ;  we  to-day  can  scarcely  imagine 
the  vogue  they  had.  Had  they  been  more  natural  they 
would  still  be  read. 

I  believe  the  application  of  the  theory  of  poetry  I  advo- 
cate would  work  many  changes  in  literary  values.  Who 
can  doubt  that  Ibsen  and  Balzac  are  greater  poets  than 
John  Hay  or  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman,  both  of  whom 
have  respectable  rank  elsewhere,  the  former  as  a  statesman 
and  the  latter  as  a  critic?  Yet  our  system  of  literary  classi- 
fication stamps  these  two  as  poets  because  of  a  few  popular 
and  able  lyrics  in  verse,  while  Ibsen  and  Balzac,  who  wrote 
in  prose,  are  not  even  considered  poets,  according  to  aca- 
demic standards.  It  is  true  Ibsen  also  wrote  some  lyrics 
and  a  few  plays  in  verse,  but  he  is  as  much  a  poet  in  The 
Wild  Duck  or  The  Master  Builder  as  he  is  in  Peer  Gynt 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     59 

or  Brand.  The  scenes  of  Oswald  losing  his  mind  at  the 
end  of  Ghosts  or  of  Ella  Rentheim  rebuking  John  Gabriel 
Borkman  for  his  desertion  of  her  are  magnificent  poems. 
As  for  the  poems  of  Balzac  they  are  too  numerous  to 
mention.  The  picture  of  the  miser  in  Eugenie  Grand et 
is  surely  poetry.  Balzac  regarded  his  stories  Louis  Lam- 
bert, Seraphita  and  The  Lily  of  the  Valley  as  poems.  In- 
flated as  they  occasionally  are,  they  are  suffused  with 
poetical  qualities.  One  could  go  on  selecting  poems  from 
Cousin  Pons,  The  Wild  Ass's  Skin,  Lost  Illusions,  etc. 
Balzac  and  Ibsen  are  poets  and  any  definition  of  poetry 
that  would  exclude  them  as  such  is  faulty. 

Under  the  new  method  of  distinguishing  poets  that  I 
seek  to  promulgate,  many  writers  will  be  admitted  as 
such  whom  the  world  never  dreamt  of  as  seers.  It  might 
astonish  some  people  if  I  make  a  claim  for  Mark  Twain 
as  a  poet.  But  who  that  has  read  Huckleberry  Finn  and 
recalls  the  description  of  the  sunrise  on  the  Mississippi, 
given  in  the  nineteenth  chapter,  will  be  prone  to  exclude 
our  greatest  imaginative  and  philosophical  humorist  from 
the  ranks  of  Apollo's  servants? 

To  convince  the  skeptical,  I  quote  from  the  famous 
passage  where  Huck  fearing  he  would  go  to  hell  if  he 
freed  a  "nigger"  slave,  determines  to  disclose  Jim's  where- 
abouts and  writes  a  note  to  that  effect.  We  all  recall 
his  mental  struggles,  how  he  finally  tore  the  letter,  with 
the  words  "All  right,  I'll  go  to  hell."  The  few  pages  tell- 
ing of  the  reflections  and  memories  which  led  to  this  de- 
cision are  certainly  poetry. 

I  got  to  thinking  over  our  trip  down  the  river;  and  I 
see  Jim  before  me  all  the  time:  in  the  day  and  in  the 
night-time,  sometimes  moonlight,  sometimes  storms,  and 
we  a-floating  along,  talking  and  singing  and  laughing. 


60     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

...  I'd  see  him  standing  my  watch  on  top  of  his'n,  'stead 
of  calling  me,  so  I  could  go  on  sleeping ;  .  .  .  and  would 
always  call  me  honey,  and  pet  me,  and  do  everything  he 
could  think  of  for  me,  and  how  good  he  always  was. 

Our  definition  allows  us  to  include  the  author  of  the 
few  lines  beginning  "With  malice  towards  none,  with 
charity  towards  all"  as  a  poet.  Indeed,  I  have  been  antici- 
pated in  the  claim  that  Lincoln  was  a  poet,  as  the  Gettys- 
burg speech  has  been  on  several  occasions  called  a  poem. 

It  may  be  asserted  that  it  is  rather  difficult  to  differ- 
entiate the  poetical  portions  of  a  prose  work  from  the 
rest.  This  same  problem  confronts  us  in  verse.  Who 
can  point  out  exactly  which  lines  in  the  Iliad  are  poetry? 
The  fact  is  that  there  are  passages  in  both  prose  and 
metrical  literature  that  we  unhesitatingly  call  poems  be- 
cause they  instantly  transform  us.  Just  as  you  never 
doubted  that  the  speeches  of  Andromache  are  poetical  and 
that  the  catalogue  of  the  ships  is  not,  so  you  will  find  it 
no  problem  to  discard  the  tedious  descriptions  in  Balzac 
as  unpoetical  while  you  accept  the  emotional  sections  as 
poems.  Just  as  critics  have  selected  the  poems  from 
lengthy  metrical  works,  choosing  the  story  of  Margaret 
from  Wordsworth's  Excursion,  for  example,  so  they  could 
glean  the  poems  of  prose  literature. 

One  objection  raised  to  the  use  of  prose  as  a  poetical 
vehicle  is  its  tendency  to  diffusiveness.  It  is  claimed  that 
here  there  are  always  temptations  to  digress  and  become 
trivial;  hence  we  get  the  interminable  novels  and  stu- 
pendous treatises  which  as  a  rule  we  do  not  have  in  verse. 
But  one  may  grow  verbose  and  expatiate  too  much  in 
metre  as  well:  the  matter  rests  entirely  with  the  author. 
Note  how  ponderous  are  some  of  the  old  epics,  the  Iliad, 
the  Divine  Comedy  and  Orlando  Furioso.  In  modern 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     61 

times  Byron's  Don  Juan,  Browning's  Ring  and  the  Book 
and  Mrs.  Browning's  Aurora  Leigh  are  examples  of 
lengthy  stories  in  verse.  All  of  these  books  are  more 
voluminous  than  the  prose  plays,  essays,  short  stories,  and 
novelettes  to  which  we  are  accustomed.  The  prose  poet 
may  weed  out  the  trifling  incidents  and  expunge  the 
redundant  from  his  composition  as  easily  as  the  verse 
writer.  Wordy  insignificant  passages  in  a  literary  product 
are  the  outcome,  not  of  a  particular  rhythmical  arrange- 
ment, such  as  prose  or  verse,  but  of  a  want  of  artistic 
feeling,  to  which  even  great  geniuses  are  at  times  subject. 
It  does  not  follow  that  a  powerful  description  or  an 
emotional  idea  or  an  impassioned  state  of  mind  need  tend 
to  diffusiveness  if  written  in  prose.  The  poet  who  has 
learned  self-restraint  in  composing  does  not  lose  his  sense 
of  proportion  even  when  writing  in  prose. 

Nor  need  we  prefer  the  verse  form  to  prose,  because, 
as  it  is  alleged,  a  metrical  poem  gives  us  the  maximum 
poetry  in  the  fewest  words.  It  is  true  we  get  an  imme- 
diate thrill  out  of  a  rhymed  lyric  or  sonnet,  while  we 
often  have  to  read  a  few  chapters  in  a  novel  to  get  a 
similar  sensation.  Nevertheless  this  is  not  because  the 
lyric  or  sonnet  is  in  verse  and  the  novel  in  prose.  It 
was  the  intention  of  the  verse  poet  to  captivate  us  in- 
stantly in  these  forms.  Translate  the  sonnet  or  lyric  into 
the  prose  of  another  language  and  the  excitement  seizes 
us  just  as  quickly.  Poe's  Raven  is  known  to  French 
readers  chiefly  in  a  literal  prose  translation.  They  re- 
spond to  it  as  quickly  as  we  do,  though  they  have  to 
forego  the  rhyme  and  the  metre.  The  writer  of  un- 
rhythmical prose  may  concentrate  any  emotions  in  a  short 
space  if  he  wishes  to  do  so.  Many  brief  prose  poems  in 
literature  are  dynamos  of  emotion.  Ecstasy  can  be  con- 
centrated in  a  short  prose  poem  as  readily  as  in  a  verse, 


62  THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

lyric  or  sonnet.  The  important  thing  is  that  the  poet 
record  the  sentiments  instantly,  avoiding  preliminaries. 

Yet  the  bulk  of  the  prose  we  have  will  not  become  poetry 
because  of  the  new  outlook  I  suggest.  It  is  after  all  only 
at  times  that  we  can  single  out  poems  in  them.  Most 
prose  works  of  merit  fall  short  of  being  poetry  as  a  whole 
or  in  parts.  The  ecstasy  or  emotion  is  often  not  concen- 
trated in  any  particular  part  of  the  work.  The  facts, 
notions  or  ideas  are  not  emotionally  presented.  Yet  the 
volume  is  literature,  and  is  more  akin  to  poetry  than  to 
science.  But  it  is  no  discredit  to  a  book  because  it  is 
just  literature  and  not  poetry. 

Gurney  in  his  The  Power  of  Sound  calls  attention  to 
the  fact  that  when  Lessing  defined  the  limits  between 
the  plastic  arts  and  poetry,  he  made  no  distinction  between 
verse  and  prose  in  his  conception  of  poetry.  Whatever 
Lessing  says  about  poetry  in  the  Laocoon  applies  equally 
well  to  prose.  True,  he  uses  Homer  as  an  illustration, 
but  he  could  just  as  well  have  used  a  modern  novel,  for 
the  question  of  metre  is  never  raised  in  determining  the 
province  of  poetry,  which  he  differentiates  from  that 
of  painting.  The  only  place  he  mentions  the  prose 
writer  is  in  the  seventeenth  section,  where  he  says  that 
the  prose  writer  usually  aims  only  after  intelligibility  and 
clarity,  while  the  poet  seeks  also  to  be  vivid.  He  does  not 
say  that  the  prose  writer  may  not  also  be  a  poet  if  he  is 
vivid.  In  fact  this  is  the  very  inference.  He  states  also 
that  the  verse  writer  who  aims  at  producing  no  illusion 
but  addresses  the  understanding  is  not  a  poet,  instancing 
Virgil  when  in  the  Georgics  he  describes  a  cow  fit  for 
breeding. 

This  is  then  the  singular  and  most  remarkable  fact 
about  the  Laocoon  that  the  author  includes  all  vivid  emo- 
tional narrative  prose  under  the  term  poetry,  which  he 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     63 

distinguishes  from  painting.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  his 
famous  distinction,  that  objects  side  by  side  in  space  or 
bodies  with  their  visible  properties  are  the  fit  subjects  for 
painting,  while  actions  or  objects  which  succeed  each  other 
in  time  are  the  peculiar  subjects  of  poetry,  is  really  also  a 
distinction  between  the  plastic  arts  and  the  prose  novel  or 
short  story.  Painting,  according  to  Lessing,  was  descrip- 
tive, poetry  was  narrative.  Now  narrative  properly  is  the 
object  of  the  novel.  It  is  true  Lessing  defined  poetry 
in  a  limited  manner,  as  if  it  were  only  narrative  litera- 
ture; but  we  are  grateful  to  him  for  implying  that  vivid 
prose  narrative  is  poetry,  and  that  poetry  extends  beyond 
metrical  compositions. 

It  is  commonly  said  that  an  emotional  piece  of  prose 
writing  is  not  poetry,  but  the  raw  material  for  poetry. 
Even  Arthur  Symons  calls  such  warning  only  poetical 
substance.  One  critic  has  even  designated  it  as  a  sort 
of  bastard  writing  that  is  neither  prose  nor  poetry.  In 
fact  rhythmical  emotional  prose  has  been  a  thorn  in  the 
academic  critic's  side.  He  has  become  more  confused 
than  ever  since  the  vogue  of  free  verse,  some  of  which 
though  really  prose  is  beyond  question  poetry.  He  no 
longer  refuses  the  title  of  poet  to  Whitman  and  he  shrinks 
from  denying  that  the  best  free  verse  is  poetry.  He 
feels  vaguely  that  since  prose  is  also  often  rhythmical, 
the  old  definition  of  poetry  as  an  emotional  piece  of 
rhythmical  writing  is  faulty,  for  it  must  include  also 
emotional  rhythmical  prose,  and  he  objects  to  this  in- 
clusion. Professor  Lowes,  who,  in  his  Convention  and 
Revolt  in  Poetry,  recognizes  the  similarity  between  the 
rhythm  of  free  verse  and  that  of  prose,  unsuccessfully 
solves  the  problem  by  saying  that  poetry  is  used  in  a  loose 
as  well  as  in  a  more  rigid  sense  and  that  free  verse  is  an 
artistic  medium  of  not  fully  developed  possibilities.  He, 


64  THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

like  most  critics,  falls  into  the  error  of  saying  that  we 
cannot  include  prose  whenever  we  speak  of  poetry.  Still 
we  must  be  grateful  to  Lowes  for  his  liberal  attitude 
towards  new  verse  forms. 

Critics  who  say  that  emotional  prose  should  be  metrical 
to  be  called  poetry  remind  us  of  the  paraphrasers  of  a 
few  centuries  ago  who  put  the  Psalms  into  rhyme.  They 
did  not  make  them  poetry,  they  usually  robbed  them  of 
it,  and  spoiled  their  effect.  Even  Milton  succumbed  to 
the  vice.  And  Gosse,  in  his  article  on  "Lyrical  Poetry" 
in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  tells  us  of  one  Azzi  who 
in  1700  put  the  book  of  Genesis  into  sonnets.  Emotional 
prose,  rhythmical  or  not,  is  poetry.  No  one  to-day  thinks 
of  employing  Matthew  Arnold's  touchstone  theory  of 
poetry  whereby  we  are  to  have  a  few  metrical  lines  of 
some  great  poets  to  apply  as  a  test  as  to  what  is  poetry. 

It  is  really  strange  that  with  the  English  prose  Bible 
before  them,  critics  should  have  insisted  on  the  metrical 
element  in  poetry.  And  one  must  add  that  parallelisms 
are  not  the  fundamental  features  of  poetry.  The  poetry 
of  Isaiah  and  David  would  have  been  poetry  without  a 
.single  parallelism.  But  we  need  not  go  to  the  prophets 
or  the  Psalms,  where  we  have  parallelism,  for  poetry  in 
the  Bible:  we  have  it  in  the  narrative  portions,  in  the 
stories  of  Ruth  and  Joseph.  Who  does  not  feel  the 
poetical  emotions  surge  through  him  as  he  comes  to  the 
forty-fifth  chapter  of  Genesis,  where  Joseph  reveals  him- 
self to  his  brothers?  Fearing  they  will  be  dismayed  be- 
cause they  sold  him,  he  assures  them  that  their  criminal 
deed  was  just  what  has  enabled  him  to  become  a  ruler 
and  save  them  from  starvation.  A  poet  was  he  who  wrote 
this  chapter  beginning  with  the  lines : 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     65 

Then  Joseph  could  not  refrain  himself  before  all  that 
stood  by  him ;  and  he  cried,  "Cause  every  man  to  go  out 
from  me."  And  there  stood  no  man  with  him,  while 
Joseph  made  himself  known  to  his  brethren,  etc. 

We  must  always  remember  that  the  emotional  appeal 
whether  in  prose  or  verse  is  the  same  to  us.  We  do  not 
get  one  kind  of  ecstasy  by  reading  poetical  prose  and  an- 
other kind  by  reading  verse.  Our  inner  soul  is  stirred, 
our  aesthetic  faculties  are  touched  in  the  same  way  if  we 
read  a  beautiful  love  letter  like  one  in  prose  of 
Eloises's,  or  a  love  poem  in  verse.  And  it  may  be  said 
here  that  no  poet  has  improved  upon  those  prose  epistles 
by  changing  them  into  metrical  form.  An  idea  colored 
with  emotion  and  a  beautiful  description  give  us  the  same 
effects  in  prose  as  they  do  in  verse.  The  test  of  poetry  is 
in  our  own  souls. 

We  can  find  poetry  in  the  most  unexpected  places,  and 
the  reader  who  wants  to  look  for  it  will  be  able  to  see  that 
poets  like  Wordsworth  and  Whitman  were  poets  in  their 
prose  critical  prefaces  as  well  as  in  the  Lyrical  Ballads  and 
Leaves  of  Grass.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Whitman  used  para- 
graphs from  his  critical  essays,  word  for  word,  in  Leaves 
of  Grass,  but  arranged  in  free  verse  form. 

It  is  true  that  at  times  the  poetry  cannot  be  distilled, 
as  it  were,  from  the  body  of  a  prose  work;  a  particular 
passage  cannot  be  lifted  up  and  called  poetry,  though  it 
be  such  (dependent,  however,  on  what  goes  before  and 
after).  For  example,  every  reader  is  thrilled  with  emotion 
when  he  comes  to  the  conclusion  of  the  chapter  in  Vanity 
Fair,  where  Amelia  Sedley  is  praying  for  George  Osborne, 
who  was  lying  dead  on  his  face  with  a  bullet  through  his 
heart.  This  line  is  poetry,  but  only  by  reason  of  our  taking 
it  into  consideration  with  earlier  parts  of  the  novel.  It 
could  not  be  published  alone,  for  it  would  be  meaningless. 


66     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

But  the  same  is  true  of  poetry  in  verse.  When  Horatio 
says  of  Hamlet  "now  cracks  a  noble  heart,"  and  hopes 
that  flights  of  angels  will  sing  him  to  his  rest,  the  pas- 
sage is  effective  only  because  we  have  lived  with  Hamlet 
and  felt  with  him  and  admired  him.  Printed  alone  the 
words  would  mean  little.  The  poetry  of  a  great  novel, 
like  that  of  a  verse  play,  is  not  always  in  isolated  passages, 
but  in  the  entire  novel  or  play  from  which  it  cannot  be 
extracted  by  quotation. 

All  lovers  of  poetry  cannot  help  being  indebted  to  Sir 
Arthur  Quiller-Couch,  who  showed  he  knew  what  con- 
stitutes poetry  when  he  composed  the  famous  Oxford 
Book  of  English  Verse.  But  one  is  grieved  that  one 
must  differ  with  him  when  it  comes  to  literary  criticism. 
In  his  book  on  the  Art  of  Writing  there  is  a  chapter  called 
"On  the  Difference  Between  Verse  and  Prose"  which 
justifies  inversion  of  the  natural  order  of  words  in  verse 
and  affirms  that  this  inversion  (of  course  along  with  metre 
and  rhyme  at  will)  is  the  difference  between  verse  and 
prose.  He  uses  the  old  illustration  that  rhyme,  metre 
and  inversion  help  the  memory,  and  that  since  the  first 
poets  sang  their  poems  to  the  harp,  and  music  and  emotion 
were  introduced,  everything  is  changed  down  to  the 
natural  order  of  the  words. 

Now,  aside  from  the  fact  that  not  all  of  the  earliest 
emotional  compositions  were  sung  to  the  harp,  it  is  ad- 
mitted on  all  sides  that  poetry  is  no  longer  written  pri- 
marily to  be  sung  to  the  harp.  Hence  there  is  no  further 
necessity  for  this  inversion  of  words.  The  natural  order 
of  prose  should  be  retained  in  emotional  writing,  with 
occasional  deviations.  But  most  certainly  this  inversion 
does  not  constitute  the  difference  between  poetry  and  non- 
poetry  even  if  it  often  does  make  verse  different  from 
prose. 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     67 

Sir  Arthur  gives  us  a  few  lines  of  Milton  in  the  inverse 
order  in  which  they  were  written  and  says  they  are  verse 
with  the  accent  of  poetry.  He  then  rewrites  them  in 
prose  order.  The  inference  is  that  they  no  longer  have 
that  accent  of  poetry.  They  are  not  poetry  in  the  prose 
version,  however,  because  they  were  not  poetry  in  the 
original  verse  order.  He  takes  four  lines  from  the  second 
book  of  Paradise  Regained,  describing  Christ's  ascent 
up  a  hill,  and  gives  us  a  prose  paraphrase  of  them.  Here 
are  the  lines  as  Milton  wrote  them: 

Up  to  a  hill  anon  his  steps  he  reared 
From  whose  high  top  to  ken  the  prospect  round, 
If  cottage  were  in  view,  sheep-cote  or  herd ; 
But  cottage,  herd,  or  sheep-cote,  none  he  saw. 

Here  is  Quiller-Couch's  prose  rendering : 

Thereupon  he  climbed  a  hill  on  the  chance  that  the  view 
from  its  summit  might  disclose  some  sign  of  human  habita- 
tion— a  herd,  a  sheep-cote,  a  cottage  perhaps.  But  he 
could  see  nothing  of  the  sort. 

This  prose  paraphrase  really  proves  that  the  original 
had  no  touch  of  poetry.  Because  the  passage  as  written 
in  metre  uses  poetic  diction  like  "anon,"  and  "ken,"  em- 
ploys inversion  like  "steps  he  reared,"  "none  he  saw,"  it 
is  assumed  that  the  passage  must  be  poetry,  but  it  is  not, 
for  it  lacks  ecstasy.  It  is  merely  one  of  the  prosaic  pas- 
sages in  a  composition  that  contains  poems,  and  is  needed 
to  bridge  over  the  poems. 

A  prose  paraphrase  or  explanation  of  a  verse  poem  is 
always  interesting  in  helping  us  understand  the  nature  of 
poetry.  For  example,  Hearn,  a  poet  himself,  took  up 
many  English  poems  and  paraphrased  and  explained  them 
to  his  Japanese  students.  Some  of  his  paraphrases  are 


68  THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

actually  greater  poems  than  the  originals.  Most  of  the 
great  poems  in  literature  have  been  analyzed  or  para- 
phrased by  biographers  and  commentators.  No  one  calls 
these  paraphrases  poetry.  But  are  we  sure  that  they  are 
not?  Are  we  certain  that  none  of  the  original  emotion  or 
ideas  are  left  intact  in  the  paraphrase  ?  On  the  contrary,  I 
believe  that  the  poetry  still  remains  in  the  paraphrase. 
True,  often  the  manner  of  expressing  an  idea  or  emotion 
is  what  counts  in  making  it  poetry,  but  expression  alone 
does  not  make  poetry.  Even  a  metrical,  emotional  and 
beautiful  utterance  of  a  commonplace  idea  sometimes  be- 
comes poetry,  but  I  cannot  concede  that  the  prose  version 
of  a  great  verse  poem  may  not  be  poetry  if  still  emotionally 
expressed. 

Let  me  take  a  concrete  instance.  The  following  passage 
from  Paradise  Lost  is  considered,  no  doubt  justly,  poetry, 
because  of  the  idea,  the  emotion  and  the  rhythm 
(academically  speaking)  : 

What  though  the  field  be  lost  ? 
All  is  not  lost ;  the  unconquerable  will, 
And  study  of  revenge,  immortal  hate, 
And  courage  never  to  submit  or  yield, 
And  what  is  else  not  to  be  overcome. 

Let  us  paraphrase  this  passage  and  try  to  retain  the  idea, 
the  emotion  and  a  prose  rhythm  by  just  changing  a  few 
words. 

And  suppose  we  lost  the  battle?  We  have  not  lost 
everything.  We  still  have  our  unconquerable  will,  our 
plans  for  revenge,  our  eternal  hatred,  and  courage  never 
to  give  in  or  surrender,  and  above  all  never  to  be  defeated. 

Is  this  passage  poetry  or  not?  I  submit  that  it  is,  if  the 
original  is.  It  is  rhythmical  (though  it  doesn't  have  to 
be  so),  the  original  idea  is  there,  and  the  passion  of  the 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     69 

speaker  has  not  been  rooted  out.  All  this  proves,  then, 
that  much  of  what  we  call  poetry  in  verse  is  either  not 
poetry  at  all  or  that  there  is  more  poetry  in  the  prose 
of  the  world  than  we  ever  imagined. 

Is  there  any  poetry  in  Lamb's  Tales  from  Shakespeare? 
Beyond  doubt;  just  as  there  is  poetry  in  the  tales  and 
histories  from  which  Shakespeare  drew  his  plays.  Is 
there  not  poetry  in  the  critical  discourses  about  poets 
where  the  critic  loses  himself  in  the  poet's  emotions  and 
becomes  that  poet  and  gives  you  his  spirit,  as,  for  example, 
Carlyle  does  in  his  study  of  Burns,  or  Symonds  in  his 
Greek  Poets? 

All  this  leads  to  one  conclusion :  that  we  should  not  be 
concerned  as  to  whether  a  piece  of  literature  is  or  is  not 
something  that  may  be  included  in  a  definition  of  poetry, 
but  whether  it  is  a  humane,  ecstatic,  emotional,  thoughtful 
piece  of  writing.  Do  not  be  worried  where  the  poetry  is. 
Rest  assured  it  is  there  somewhere,  for  we  should  judge 
poetry  by  the  effect  on  us  and  not  by  the  compliance  with 
rules  of  rhythm  or  any  other  rules  of  composition.  And 
all  great  literature  which  has  a  similar  emotional  effect 
upon  us,  whether  it  is  in  verse  or  prose,  has  poetry  in  it. 
Walt  Whitman  did  not  insist  that  his  Leaves  of  Grass 
be  called  poetry ;  yet  that  is  what  it  turns  out  to  be. 

The  reader  may  reply  that  if  poetry  is  to  be  found  to 
a  large  extent  in  the  prose  of  the  world,  all  distinctions 
are  broken  down  as  to  what  poetry  is  and  is  not,  and  you 
might  as  well  look  for  it  in  the  stories  in  the  newspapers. 
I  gladly  accept  the  challenge :  there  is  poetry  in  the  news- 
papers. When  the  Spoon  River  Anthology  appeared  many 
critics  said  it  was  nothing  more  than  a  collection  of  news- 
paper obituaries,  told  in  the  first  person,  that  differed  from 
news  items  only  in  that  the  lines  were  printed  as  free 
verse,  and  that  therefore  it  was  no  more  poetry  than  a 


70  THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

newspaper  story.  On  the  contrary,  it  would  have  been 
poetry  had  it  appeared  as  prose  in  a  newspaper. 

I  have  no  doubt  many  readers  will  recall  newspaper 
stories  that  moved  them  like  a  poem.  Those  especially 
well  written  ones  of  love  tragedies  are  often  poetry;  by 
virtue  of  their  ecstatic  nature  they  arouse  our  emotions. 

The  poetry  of  our  day  is  not  monopolized  by  dabblers 
in  metre  and  is  not  shared  exclusively  by  readers  of 
verse.  It  is  being  written  by  our  prose  writers  and  occa- 
sionally by  our  journalists,  and  is  being  read  by  the  gen- 
eral public.  It  is  not  the  heritage  of  the  professor  or  the 
critic.  The  verse  poets  and  readers  are  not  the  only  lovers 
of  poetry,  but  the  great  public  who  reads  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  and  Lorna  Doone  is  reading  poetry,  albeit  not  of 
the  highest  order. 

I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  there  is  more  poetry  in 
the  prose  writings  of  a  nation's  literature  than  in  its  verse 
writings.  The  prose  writer  usually  travels  leisurely  and 
waxes  ecstatic  occasionally.  He  does  not  concentrate  his 
emotions  nor  seek  to  depict  them  immediately.  The  verse 
writer  as  a  rule  tries  to  depict  emotions  from  the  start. 
He  is  greater  as  a  poet  than  many  prose  writers,  because 
he  poetizes,  thinking  he  must  do  this  naturally  in  verse, 
while  the  prose  writer  does  not  believe  it  is  his  duty  to 
do  so  in  prose,  but  he  is  often  a  poet  because  he  cannot 
help  it.  There  is  more  poetry  in  a  volume  of  Burns  or 
Shelley  or  Heine  than  in  a  volume  of  similar  length  by  a 
prose  writer,  because  these  poets  tried  to  put  emotion  into 
every  separate  portion,  no  matter  how  small.  Yet  a  prose 
writer  can  do  the  same  thing  if  he  wants  to  do  so. 

Any  one  who  is  a  great  reader  of  books  of  travel  is 
impressed  by  the  fact  that  in  these  works  there  is  occa- 
sionally literature  of  ecstasy  of  a  high  order.  There  are 
descriptions  and  narratives  recorded  with  beauty,  vivid- 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     71 

ness,  interest;  there  are  reflections,  insight  into  human 
nature  that  often  surpass  the  works  of  prose  fiction  and 
verse  poetry  we  read.  Yet  because  these  works  are  called 
"travels,"  they  are  not  supposed  to  contain  poems  or 
creative  literature.  Had  the  authors  given  us  as  good 
description  in  verse,  the  critics  would  have  called  them 
poets. 

Hearn's  books  on  Japan  are  after  all  works  of  travel, 
but  they  contain  poetry  or  the  literature  of  ecstasy  be- 
cause Hearn  was  a  poet.  I  am  not  claiming  for  many 
works  of  travel  a  place  only  as  literature,  for  it  is  usually 
conceded  that  the  best  books  of  travel  are  literature,  but 
I  urge  that  many  of  these  books  are  in  parts  poetry,  and 
their  authors  are  poets.  It  is  recognized,  however,  that 
Pierre  Loti  is  a  poet  in  his  books  of  travel.  Doughty's 
Arabia  Deserta  is  full  of  poetry. 

Robinson  Crusoe  and  Gulliver's  Travels  are  but  works 
of  travel,  and  are  poetry  because  of  the  ecstatic  presenta- 
tion of  ideas.  You  will  find  poems  in  prose  not  only  in 
the  travels  of  great  writers,  like  Goethe,  Taine,  Heine,  in 
the  works  of  old  writers  who  were  chiefly  travelers,  like 
Hakluyt,  Mandeville,  Marco  Polo,  but  in  many  volumes 
that  have  been  published  in  our  own  day. 

Anthologies  of  thousands  of  poems  in  prose  could  be 
compiled.  The  prose  of  every  literature  is  full  of  poetry, 
even  concentrated  poetry,  more  or  less  rhythmical.  You 
may  cull  poems  out  of  the  prose  writings  of  men  in  Eng- 
land to-day,  from  Hardy,  Moore,  Yeats,  Symons,  Kipling, 
Hudson,  Conrad,  Galsworthy,  Hewlett  and  D.  H.  Law- 
rence. 

You  can  find  poetry  in  various  scenes  of  the  great  body 
of  prose  dramatists  that  have  grown  up  in  Europe  since 
Ibsen,  in  Hauptmann,  in  Synge,  in  Chekhov,  in  Jacinto 
Benavente,  in  dialogues  where  an  idea  is  fought  for  or 


72    THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

an  emotion  displayed.  It  is  manifestly  absurd  to  crown 
with  the  name  of  poetry  every  petty  emotion  or  descrip- 
tion by  some  versifier,  and  deny  it  to  the  great  dramatists 
who  depict  passions  and  color  great  ideas  with  emotion. 
No  one  thought  of  denying  the  title  of  poets  to  the  dra- 
matists when  they  formerly  wrote  in  verse.  Are  you 
going  to  deny  it  to  them  because  they  give  us  the  same, 
if  not  a  greater  effect  in  their  prose  than  the  old  dramatist 
did  in  verse? 

And  I  find  much  poetry,  especially  in  letters,  memoirs 
and  biographies.  I  find  poems  in  biographies  like  Bisland's 
Hearn,  Meynell's  Francis  Thompson,  Woodberry's  Poe, 
Lawton's  Balzac.  I  give  these  more  or  less  recent  books 
as  examples.  The  works  are  full  of  emotional  passages 
dealing  with  crucial  events  in  the  lives  of  the  subjects. 
You  will  find  poetry  in  famous  biographies  like  Moore's 
Byron,  Dowden's  Shelley,  Forster's  Dickens,  Cooke's 
Ruskin,  Bielschowsky's  Goethe,  Froude's  Carlyle,  etc.,  to 
name  just  the  lives  of  some  literary  men. 

It  is  particularly  pleasing  to  find  poetry  in  literary  prose 
criticism.  For  it  was  always  held  that  criticism  was  but 
a  secondary  art,  rarely  creative  in  the  same  sense  as  poetry, 
supposed  to  be  a  product  of  the  mind  and  not  the  soul, 
and  merely  a  commentary  on  poetry.  It  is  true,  formerly 
poets  were  often  inclined  to  write  their  criticism  in  verse, 
thinking  that  thus  it  became  poetry.  But  it  is  only  the 
ecstatic  presentation  of  critical  ideas  that  makes  criticism 
poetry,  whether  in  prose  or  verse.  Poets  have  often  de- 
scribed the  mission  of  poetry  in  verse,  and  given  us 
genuine  poems.  Horace  and  Verlaine  have  done  this.  But 
we  have  had  great  poetry  in  the  critical  work  in  prose 
of  many  critics.  You  will  find  poetry  in  Carlyle,  Ruskin, 
Goethe,  Pater,  Brandes.  You  will  find  it  in  the  prose 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     73 

essays  of  poets  very  often  in  spite  of  the  popular  tradi- 
tion that  poets  are  not  good  prose  writers. 

I  give  two  examples.  The  first  is  from  Swinburne's 
book  on  Blake : 

To  him  the  veil  of  outer  things  seemed  always  to 
tremble  with  some  breath  behind  it;  seemed  at  times  to 
be  rent  in  sunder  with  clamour  and  sudden  lightning. 
All  the  void  of  earth  and  air  seemed  to  quiver  with  the 
passage  of  sentient  wings  and  palpitate  under  the  pressure 
of  conscious  feet.  Flowers  and  weeds,  stars  and  stones, 
spoke  with  articulate  lips  and  gazed  with  living  eyes. 
Hands  were  stretched  towards  him  from  beyond  the  dark- 
ness of  material  nature,  to  tempt  or  to  support,  to  guide 
or  to  restrain.  His  hardest  facts  were  the  vaguest  alle- 
gories of  other  men.  To  him  all  symbolic  things  were 
literal,  all  literal  things  symbolic.  About  his  path  and 
about  his  bed,  around  his  ears  and  under  his  eyes,  an 
infinite  play  of  spiritual  life  seethed  and  swarmed  or 
shone  and  sang.  Spirits  imprisoned  in  the  husk  and  shell 
of  earth  consoled  or  menaced  him.  Every  leaf  bore  a 
growth  of  angels;  the  pulse  of  every  minute  sounded  as 
the  falling  foot  of  God ;  under  the  rank  raiment  of  weeds, 
in  the  drifting  down  of  thistles,  strange  faces  frowned 
and  white  hair  fluttered;  tempters  and  allies,  wraiths  of 
the  living  and  phantoms  of  the  dead,  crowded  and  made 
populous  the  winds  that  blew  about  him,  the  fields  and 
hills  over  which  he  gazed. 

The  second  is  from  James  Thomson's  essay  on  Shelley : 

The  only  true  or  inspired  poetry  is  always  from  within, 
not  from  without.  The  experience  contained  in  it  has 
been  spiritually  transmuted  from  lead  into  gold.  It  is 
severely  logical,  the  most  trivial  of  its  adornments  being 
subservient  to,  and  suggested  by,  the  dominant  idea ;  any 
departure  from  whose  dictates  would  be  the  "falsifying  of 
a  revelation."  It  is  unadulterated  with  worldly  wisdom, 
deference  to  prevailing  opinions,  mere  talent  or  cleverness. 
Its  anguish  is  untainted  by  the  gall  of  bitterness,  its  joy  is 


74  THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

never  selfish,  its  grossness  is  never  obscene.  It  perceives 
always  the  profound  identity  underlying  all  surface  dif- 
ferences. It  is  a  living  organism,  not  a  dead  aggregate, 
and  its  music  is  the  expression  of  the  law  of  its  growth; 
so  that  it  could  no  more  be  set  to  a  different  melody  than 
could  a  rose-tree  be  consummated  with  lilies  or  violets. 
It  is  most  philosophic  when  most  enthusiastic,  the  clearest 
light  of  its  wisdom  being  shed  from  the  keenest  fire  of  its 
love.  It  is  a  synthesis  not  arithmetical,  but  algebraical; 
that  is  to  say,  its  particular  subjects  are  universal  symbols, 
its  predicates,  universal  laws:  hence  it  is  infinitely  sug- 
gestive. It  is  ever- fresh  wonder  at  the  infinite  mystery, 
ever-young  faith  in  the  eternal  soul.  Whatever  be  its 
mood,  we  feel  that  it  is  not  self-possessed  but  God- 
possessed  ;  whether  the  God  came  down  serene  and  stately 
as  Jove,  when,  a  swan,  he  wooed  Leda;  or  with  over- 
whelming might  insupportably  burning,  as  when  he  con- 
sumed Semele. 

Criticism  deals  with  ideas  that  relate  to  life,  and  when 
written  with  ecstasy  on  human  topics  and  not  on  tech- 
nique it  is  poetry.  The  passage  in  Shelley's  Defense  of 
Poetry,  beginning  with  the  words  "Poetry  is  the  record 
of  the  best  and  happiest  moments,  etc.,"  as  well  as  the 
conclusion  of  Poe's  essay  on  The  Poetic  Principle  are 
poetry.  The  critics  here  were  poets  in  their  prose  criti- 
cism, no  less  than  in  their  rhymed  lyrics. 

As  the  reader  will  fathom  by  this  time,  my  aim  is  to 
free  poetry  from  its  bondage  to  requirements  that  were 
thought  essential  to  it.  I  object  most  emphatically  to 
demands  for  rhyme,  metre,  rhythm,  alliteration,  assonance, 
parallelism,  repetition  of  word  or  phrase  or  line,  tropes 
or  figures  of  speech,  poetical  diction,  and  any  form  of 
pattern.  The  poet  has  the  right  to  use  any  of  the  above 
instruments  as  he  sees  fit,  whenever  he  thinks  they  enhance 
the  ecstasy  in  his  work.  But  no  critic  has  a  right  to  lay 
clown  a  definition  of  poetry  and  insist  that  metre  or  rhythm 


ECSTASY,  NOT  RHYTHM,  ESSENTIAL     75 

must  be  employed  by  a  poet.  Professor  Mackail  in  his 
Oxford  Lectures  on  Poetry  defines  poetry  as  patterned 
language,  formally  and  technically,  adding  that  the  tech- 
nical essence  of  the  pattern  is  the  repeat,  and  that  when 
there  is  no  repeat  there  is  technically  no  poetry.  If  this 
definition  were  true,  then  passages  in  the  Bible  full 
of  poetry,  which  use  no  parallelism,  would  not  be  poetry. 
The  pattern  does  not  make  the  poem,  it  often  ruins  it. 
While  it  is  true  that  when  excited  we  repeat  expressions 
and  become  rhythmical,  we  do  not  do  so  with  regularity 
and  uniformity.  How  puerile  many  poems  by  savages, 
and  even  by  the  early  civilized  Babylonians  and  Egyptians, 
sound  because  the  first  impediment  of  art,  the  repeat, 
is  employed,  and  a  phrase  is  repeated  ad  nauseam  like 
the  words  of  a  child  learning  how  to  talk.  (  !) 

When  we  shake  off  our  subservience  to  the  pattern  in 
poetry  we  shall  have  little  use  for  the  numerous  works 
on  the  art  of  writing  poetry.  We  shall  find  that  many 
of  the  old  books  on  poetry  written  with  much  learning 
by  scholars  and  poets,  like  Aristotle,  Horace,  Vida, 
Scaliger,  Vossius,  Fabricius,  Boileau,  Pope,  Opitz, 
Gottsched,  Dante,  are  in  part  obsolete.  I  do  not  mean  that 
these  worthy  works  have  all  to  be  thrown  on  the  scrap 
heap.  But  they  laid  down  absurd  rules  as  to  how  to 
write  poetry  and  how  to  determine  it;  they  sought  to 
confine  it  by  rules  gleaned  from  older  poets  and  insisted 
future  poets  obey  these  rules.  Yet  great  poets,  who 
never  even  read  them,  disregarded  all  their  rules  and 
created  great  poetry. 

The  chief  thing  that  can  be  said  for  these  critics  is  that 
they  excel  the  moderns  in  scholarship.  These  learned  men 
represent  an  almost  extinct  class,  men  who  knew  all  the 
classics  and  all  the  books  of  Europe.  They  make  us 


76     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

regret  that  the  day  of  the  man  of  learning  is  over,  espe- 
cially at  a  time  when  so  many  ignorant  poets  and  critics 
and  reviewers  discuss  and  decide  emphatically  on  many 
matters  wherein  a  little  learning  is  not  a  dangerous  thing. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PROSE  THE  NATURAL  LANGUAGE  OF  THE  LITERATURE 
OF   ECSTASY 

WORDSWORTH  believed  that  the  language  used  by  peo- 
ple in  poetry  should  be  that  of  the  natural  language  of 
men  under  the  influence  of  their  feelings  and  that  the 
diction  of  metrical  poetry  should  differ  in  no  wise  from 
that  of  prose.  Yet  the  only  writers  who  use  the  natural 
diction  of  men  are  novelists,  prose  dramatists  and  short 
story  writers,  and,  curiously  enough,  because  they  did  not 
write  verse,  it  has  not  often  been  suspected  that  these 
men  were  poets.  Wordsworth's  views  are  really  proofs 
that  poetry  is  found  in  prose,  for  the  prose  writers  comply 
with  his  requirements  of  using  in  their  compositions  the 
natural  conversation  of  men  under  the  influence  of  natural 
feelings.  They  also  comply  with  Wordsworth's  definition 
of  poetry,  recording  "emotions  recollected  in  tranquillity." 

Hazlitt  has  ably  summed  up  the  influence  of  the  French 
Revolution  on  Wordsworth.  Our  poet  did  away  with 
mythological  references,  with  tales  about  legendary  char- 
acters. He  wrote  about  the  emotions  of  the  common 
people  and  introduced  no  far-fetched  metaphors,  nor  made 
pedantic  allusions. 

Wordsworth,  however,  did  not  claim,  as  Coleridge 
thought  he  did,  that  the  language  of  verse  poetry  must  be 
that  of  ignorant  people.  Wordsworth  never  asserted  that 
he  wanted  the  poets  to  use  the  language  of  peasants,  ex- 
cept when  peasants  were  portrayed  and  represented  as 
speaking.  He  simply  protested  against  stilted,  artificial 

77 


78  THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

language  in  verse  poetry.  He  held  the  use  of  such  lan- 
guage in  verse  poetry  to  be  ridiculous,  as  it  was  in  prose. 
He  was  not  an  exponent  of  prose  poetry,  even  though 
he  laid  little  stress  on  the  importance  of  metre.  As  the 
authors  of  the  article  on  Wordsworth  in  the  Encyclopedia 
Britannica  state,  the  farthest  he  went  in  defense  of  prose 
structure  in  poetry  was  to  say  that  if  the  words  in  verse 
happened  to  be  in  the  order  of  prose,  they  were  not  neces- 
sarily prosaic  in  the  sense  of  unpoetic.  He  did  not  (un- 
fortunately) try  to  eliminate  metre  in  poetry.  He  no 
doubt  agreed  with  Coleridge's  own  defense  of  meter  in 
the  Biographia  Literaria.  He  did  not  write  against  his 
own  theory,  for  he  always  employed  metre  and — except 
in  some  ballads — a  diction  that  was  even  literary. 

Though  both  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  were  not  over- 
awed by  the  necessity  of  metre  in  poetry,  they  believed 
in  its  use,  and  were  opposed  to  prose  poetry.  Coleridge, 
however,  wrote  a  prose  poem  The  Wanderings  of  Cain 
and  some  of  his  essays  are  prose  poetry.  Coleridge  also 
devoted  an  entire  chapter  in  his  Biographia  Literaria 
to  the  defense  of  metre  as  a  vehicle  for  poetry.  He 
attributes  the  origin  of  metre  to  the  fact  that  the 
mind  makes  a  conscious  effort  to  hold  passion  in  check 
by  fettering  it  with  regular  numbers.  On  the  contrary, 
this  conscious  check  is  due  to  imitation  of  old  examples, 
to  fear  in  defying  the  critics,  for  the  natural  language  of 
passion  is  irregular  rhythm,  and  it  is  impatient  of  being 
confined  in  regular,  artificial  numbers.  Coleridge  thinks 
the  effect  of  metre  is  "to  increase  the  vivacity  and  sus- 
ceptibility both  of  the  general  feelings  and  the  attention" 
by  the  continued  excitement  of  surprise.  I  submit  that 
metre  often  distracts  the  attention  from  the  poem's  real 
object,  which  is  to  depict  ecstasy.  Metre  often  diverts  our 
ear  to  the  singsong  tone  in  which  the  emotions  are 


PROSE  THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ECSTASY     79 

couched.  Instead  of  adding  to  the  vivacity  and  suscepti- 
bility of  the  feelings  it  really  makes  us  suspect  that  the 
poet  is  not  sincere,  for  the  man  of  emotions  expresses 
them  spontaneously  and  does  not  trick  them  out  in  pat- 
tern. Next,  Coleridge  assumes  that  because  of  custom, 
metre  must  have  some  property  in  common  with  poetry. 
This  argument  cannot  stand  when  we  take  into  considera- 
tion the  innumerable  emotional  passages  that  have  been 
written  in  prose.  A  custom  is  only  a  passing  practice,  and 
free  verse  writers  have  abandoned  the  custom  of  writing 
in  metre  and  in  many  cases  have  produced  good  poetry. 
Lastly,  our  critic  thinks  that  every  poet  is  impelled  "to 
seek  unity  by  harmonious  adjustment,  and  thus  establish- 
ing the  principle,  that  all  the  parts  of  an  organized  whole 
must  be  assimilated  to  the  more  important  and  essential 
parts."  But  why  assume  that  there  is  no  unity  of  har- 
monious adjustment  in  an  emotional  passage  in  prose? 
Or  why  identify  such  unity  with  a  metrical  pattern?  Isn't 
a  Psalm  in  the  Bible  a  unity  of  harmonious  adjustment? 
Even  if  the  essential  part  of  a  poetic  piece  tends  to  assume 
a  certain  pattern  it  does  not  mean  that  the  whole  piece 
should  be  given  a  patterned  form.  Some  day  it  will  be 
recognized  that  a  long  composition  recording  different 
emotions  is  really  unaesthetic  in  a  uniform  pattern. 

"As  to  the  accents  of  words,"  says  Bacon,  in  his  Ad- 
vancement of  Learning,  Book  VI,  Ch.  I,  "there  is  no 
necessity  for  taking  notice  of  so  trivial  a  thing;  only  it 
may  be  proper  to  intimate  that  these  are  observed  with 
great  exactness,  whilst  the  accents  of  sentences  are 
neglected ;  though  it  is  nearly  common  to  all  mankind  to 
sink  the  voice  at  the  end  of  a  period,  to  raise  it  in  interro- 
gation, and  the  like." 

This  passage  is  the  first  attack  in  English  on  metre. 

It  was  Whitman  who  gave  the  death  blow  to  metre.    He 


8o     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

brought  poetry  back  to  rhythmical  prose,  and  is  the  greatest 
liberator  poetry  has  ever  had.  He  demonstrated  that  an 
entire  volume  might  be  written  in  rhythmical  prose  (with 
the  lines  broken  up),  and  that  the  product  could  be  the 
highest  poetry.  His  Leaves  of  Grass  ignored  all  the  rules 
laid  down  in  various  books  on  poetics.  Whitman  has  done 
more  than  most  critics  to  convey  to  the  world  what  poetry 
really  is. 

"In  my  opinion,"  says  Whitman,  "the  time  has  arrived 
to  essentially  break  down  the  barriers  of  form  between 
prose  and  poetry.  I  say  the  latter  is  henceforth  to  win 
and  maintain  its  character  regardless  of  rhyme,  and  the 
measurement-rules  of  iambic,  spondee,  dactyl,  &c.,  and 
that  even  if  rhyme  and  those  measurements  continue  to 
furnish  the  medium  for  inferior  writers  and  themes  (espe- 
cially for  persiflage  and  the  comic,  as  there  seems  hence- 
forward, to  the  perfect  taste,  something  inevitably  comic 
in  rhyme,  merely  in  itself,  and  anyhow),  the  truest  and 
greatest  Poetry  (while  subtly  and  necessarily  always 
rhythmic,  and  distinguishable  enough)  can  never  again, 
in  the  English  language,  be  express'd  in  arbitrary  and 
rhyming  metre,  any  more  than  the  greatest  eloquence,  or 
the  truest  power  and  passion." 

We  have  long  been  laboring  under  the  mischievous 
Aristotelian  division  of  poetry  into  Epic,  Dramatic  and 
Lyric,  and  critics  have  exhausted  themselves  trying  to 
determine  which  of  these  was  the  highest  form  of  poetry. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  epic  poem  was  only  the  primi- 
tive author's  method  of  writing  a  poetical  novel  centering 
around  wars ;  or  a  later  poet's  imitation  of  that  form.  The 
dramatic  poem  was  another  way  of  telling  a  story  without 
introducing  much  narration  or  description.  Poetry  does 
not  inhere  in  an  epic  of  Homer  or  a  play  of  Sophocles 
by  virtue  of  the  form,  but  because  of  the  emotions  de- 


PROSE  THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ECSTASY     81 

scribed,  and  similar  descriptions  of  emotions  are  to  be 
found  in  our  fiction  and  prose  plays. 

Again  we  have  followed  the  ancients  in  subdividing 
lyric  poetry  into  elegy,  pastoral,  ode,  satire,  idyll.  The 
moderns  introduced  the  sonnet,  the  ballade,  the  ballad  and 
other  forms.  These  divisions  have  perverted  our  knowl- 
edge as  to  the  nature  of  poetry.  Any  one  can  make  a 
similar  classification  of  the  poetry  in  prose,  but  it  is  use- 
less to  do  so.  Poetry  is  recorded  emotion  and  depicts 
various  characteristics.  The  Song  of  Deborah  is  a  war 
song,  a  hymn  and  a  satire,  all  in  one. 

Professor  Posnett  in  his  Comparative  Literature  pro- 
tested long  before  Croce  against  these  artificial  divisions 
in  poetry. 

Poetry  is  the  voice  of  excited  man;  it  is  as  Baum- 
garten  said — "perfect  sensitive  speech,"  a  definition  that 
Croce  regards  as  probably  the  best  ever  given  of  poetry, 
while  Saintsbury  scoffs  at  it.  It  is  immaterial  whether 
the  rhythm  is  there  or  not.  Prose  is  always  poetry  when 
it  is  sensitized.  Nietzsche,  himself  a  great  poet,  also  saw 
this.  "Let  it  be  observed,"  said  Nietzsche,  "that  the  great 
masters  of  prose  have  almost  always  been  poets  as  well, 
whether  openly,  or  only  in  secret  and  for  the  closet ;  and 
in  truth  one  only  writes  good  prose  in  view  of  poetry." 
He  names  Leopardi,  Landor,  Emerson  and  Merimee 
among  the  great  prose  writers  who  were  poets.  We  can 
add  many  other  writers  of  essays,  dialogues,  and  criticisms 
to  complement  his  list. 

"The  distinction  between  poetry  and  prose  cannot  be 
justified,"  said  Croce.  "Poetry  is  the  language  of  senti- 
ment ;  prose  of  intellect ;  but  since  the  intellect  is  also 
sentiment,  in  its  concretion  and  reality,  so  all  prose  has  a 
poetical  side."  "There  exists  poetry  without  prose,  but 
not  prose  without  poetry."  Poetical  material  permeates 


82     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

the  souls  of  all ;  any  expression  of  it  in  verse  or  prose,  in 
painting  or  music,  is  poetry.  Since  all  poetry  is  expression 
and  all  expression  lyric,  the  divisions  of  different  kinds  of 
poetry  into  epic,  dramatic,  etc.,  or  different  divisions  of 
one  poem  into  scenes,  books,  chapters,  acts,  stanzas,  para- 
graphs, are  of  little  importance,  and  are  matters  of  con- 
venience. 

Poetry  is  essentially  lyrical.  There  is  no  such  thing 
as  dramatic  or  epic  poetry.  All  poetry  is  the  emotional 
outcry  of  the  poet  or  his  characters.  We  may  have  an 
emotion  recorded  in  a  separate  poem  called  a  lyric,  or  in 
a  speech  in  a  composition  divided  into  acts,  following  cer- 
tain rules  and  known  as  a  drama.  Similarly  the  speeches 
in  epic  poems  are  lyrics.  The  poetry  of  Homer  or  Shake- 
speare is  not  epic  or  dramatic,  for  poetry  is  just  an  emo- 
tional outburst.  Andromache's  speeches  and  Hamlet's 
soliloquies  could  have  appeared  alone  and  they  would  have 
been  considered  lyrics ;  they  remain  lyrics  even  in  the  body 
of  a  long  composition.  The  emotional  passages  in  all  prose 
works  are  also  lyrical  poetry.  There  is  really  only  one 
kind  of  poetry,  lyrical  poetry,  for  all  poems  are  emotional 
outbursts  of  an  individual.  Every  imaginative  literary 
composition,  whether  in  verse  or  prose,  is  made  up  of 
lyrical  poems,  more  or  less. 

One  should  no  more  look  for  a  chapter  on  the  drama 
in  a  book  like  this  dealing  with  poetry  than  for  a  treatise 
on  the  novel.  A  drama,  considered  merely  as  a  series  of 
scenes  bound  together  by  a  plot  in  a  fit  manner  to  be 
presented  on  the  stage  to  move  people,  and  based  on  rules 
that  relate  to  economy  of  words,  concentration  of  facts 
and  strikingness  of  action,  is  a  performance  that  has  a 
technique  of  its  own ;  the  dramatist  is  a  poet  only  by  virtue 
of  the  ecstasy  he  puts  in  the  work.  Considered  in  its 
primary  significance  as  a  performance  where  action  is 


PROSE  THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ECSTASY     83 

the  chief  feature,  the  drama  becomes  poetry  in  those  parts 
where  the  action  and  emotion  are  concentrated. 

It  is,  however,  often  difficult  to  extract  scenes  from 
the  play,  as  they  lose  in  effectiveness  by  being  thus  sepa- 
rated. But  the  fact  remains  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
dramatic  poetry,  for  the  essence  of  all  poetry  is  its  lyricism. 
Dramatic  scenes  contain  the  lyric  cries  of  the  dramatis 
persona.  Action  is  but  the  emotional  disturbances  of  the 
characters  and  no  longer  merely  means  violent  conduct, 
surprises,  battles,  duels,  suicides,  murders.  All  great 
novels  have  dramatic  scenes  and  they  are  often  as  exuber- 
ant in  poetry  as  are  similar  scenes  in  plays.  We  no  longer 
regard  as  tragedies  only  those  plays  in  verse  where  a 
virtuous  person  of  high  degree  is  in  a  frightful  predica- 
ment because  of  unjust  and  unlooked-for  defeat  with 
fate.  No,  in  spite  of  Aristotle,  the  suffering  of  even  a 
wicked  person  of  low  station,  depicted  as  due  to  his  own 
fault  as  of  Hurst  wood  in  Sister  Carrie,  and  described 
in  prose  narrative,  is  also  tragedy.  There  is  incidentally 
no  such  thing  as  a  comic  dramatic  poem,  but  a  comic 
scene  may  be  poetic  if  it  moves  to  ecstasy  (not  merely 
to  farcic  laughter),  and  if  it  is  essentially  lyrical.  Comedy 
also  appears  in  works  of  fiction  in  prose,  and  may  be 
poetical.  Moreover,  most  performances  in  prose  dialogue 
or  fiction  present  an  admixture  of  tragic  and  comic. 

Tragedy  often  presents  lyric  poems  greater  than  any 
other  work  of  literature ;  hence  Aristotle  and  his  imitators 
concluded  that  a  verse  tragedy  was  the  highest  form  of 
poetry.  This  is  not  so.  If  Shakespeare  and  Sophocles 
lived  in  our  day  they  might  have  written  novels  or  essays, 
and  I  daresay  with  their  genius  those  novels  or  essays 
would  have  been  as  good  as  their  plays  and  would  have 
contained  as  great  poetry. 

Our  great  poets  do  not  owe  their  greatness  to  the  use 


84     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

of  the  stereotyped  literary  metrical  forms.  A  man 
may  have  a  great  gift  for  the  use  of  these  forms  and 
not  be  a  great  poet,  just  as  he  may  be  a  great  poet  and 
fall  flat  when  they  encumber  him.  Ruskin  and  Dickens 
were  great  poets,  but  when  we  say  that  their  metrical 
compositions  were  not  great  poetry  we  merely  mean  that 
they  were  not  adept  in  choosing  rhymes  and  complying 
with  metrical  rules.  To  do  this  requires  a  distinct  gift. 
An  amateur  selects  forced  rhymes  and  has  no  ear.  Swin- 
burne, besides  being  a  great  poet,  had  a  distinct  gift  of 
creating  melodious  verse ;  but  many  parodists  have  shown 
that  they  also  had  this  gift  without  being  able  to  write 
poetry.  / 

Mrs.  Browning  was  a  good  poet  both  in  verse  and  in 
prose.  She  wrote  her  love  poems  in  prose  in  her  letters  to 
her  husband,  and  in  verse  in  the  Portuguese  sonnets  which 
are  nothing  more  than  some  of  the  letters  put  into  metre 
and  rhyme ;  there  are  some  who  think  that  the  letters  are 
the  better  poetry  of  the  two.  Her  sentiments  did  not  be- 
come poetry  because  they  were  put  in  sonnet  form. 

The  following  letter  is  poetry : 

I  pour  out  my  thoughts  to  you,  dearest,  dearest,  as  if 
it  were  right  rather  to  think  of  doing  myself  that  good 
and  relief,  than  of  you  who  have  to  read  all.  But  you 
spoil  me  into  an  excess  of  liberty  by  your  tenderness. 
Best  in  the  world !  Oh — you  help  me  to  live — I  am  better 
and  lighter  since  I  have  drawn  near  to  you  even  on  this 
paper — already  I  am  better  and  lighter.  And  now  I  am 
going  to  dream  of  you  ...  to  meet  you  on  some  mystical 
landing  place  ...  in  order  to  be  quite  well  to-morrow. 
Oh — we  are  so  selfish  on  this  earth,  that  nothing  grieves 
us  very  long,  let  it  be  ever  so  grievous,  unless  we  are 
touched  in  ourselves  ...  in  the  apple  of  our  eye  ...  in 
the  quick  of  our  heart  ...  in  what  you  are  and  where  you 
are  .  .  .  my  own  dearest  beloved!  So  you  need  not  be 


PROSE  THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ECSTASY     85 

afraid  for  me.  We  all  look  to  our  own,  as  I  to  you;  the 
thunderbolts  may  strike  the  tops  of  the  cedars,  and,  except 
in  the  first  part,  none  of  us  be  moved.  True  it  is  of  me 
— not  of  you  perhaps,  certainly  you  are  better  than  I  in  all 
things.  Best  in  the  world  you  are — no  one  is  like  you. 
Can  you  read  what  I  have  written  ?  Do  not  love  me  less ! 
Do  you  think  that  I  cannot  feel  you  love  me,  through  all 
this  distance?  If  you  loved  me  less,  I  should  know,  with- 
out a  word  or  sign.  Because  I  live  by  your  loving  me! 
(June  24,  1846.) 

It  took  the  Greeks  and  Romans  some  time  to  learn  that 
prose  was  the  best  medium  for  philosophy  and  history. 
Plato  had  the  good  sense  to  write  in  prose  instead  of  fol- 
lowing the  ridiculous  method  of  versifying  of  the  early 
Greek  philosophers,  like  Parmenides  and  Empedocles. 

In  the  first  century  A.D.  various  Roman  historians 
wrote  of  historical  events  in  the  form  of  epic  poems. 
These  are  really  histories  with  a  little  occasional  glimmer 
of  poetry.  Thus  we  had  Silius's  Pontlca,  Valerius  Flac- 
cus's  Argonautica,  Statius's  Thebais,  and  Lucan's  Phar- 
salia.  The  last  two  works  were  especially  admired  in  the 
medieval  ages  when  rhymed  or  metrical  historical  chron- 
icles were  the  fashion,  and  they  were  favorites  of  Dante. 
Very  few  people  to-day  read  these  metrical  histories.  Eng- 
lish literature  also  is  full  of  metrical  and  rhymed  histories, 
geographies,  criticisms,  scientific  works,  essays,  etc.  But 
no  one  reads  Warner's  Albion's  England,  Drayton's  Poly 
Olbion,  or  Daniel's  First  Four  Books  of  the  Civil  War. 
And  Darwin's  versified  Botanical  Garden  has  been  a 
standing  joke. 

It  is  remarkable  how  past  usages  in  literature  influence 
us.  The  examples  of  Lucretius  versifying  philosophy  in 
his  Nature  of  Things,  and  that  of  Horace  writing  literary 
criticism  in  verse  in  his  Art  of  Poetry,  have  been  fruitful 
of  mischief.  Even  much  of  the  lengthy  works  of  Shelley, 


86     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Byron  and  Browning  would  have  been  better  had  they 
been  written  in  prose,  and  they  would  have  lost  none  of 
their  poetic  qualities.  The  greatness  of  the  Ring  and  the 
Book,  Don  Juan  and  the  Revolt  of  Islam  remains  when 
these  works  are  translated  into  the  prose  of  another  lan- 
guage. 

The  French  have  perfected  the  art  of  poetical  prose,*  or 
prose  poetry,  probably  more  than  any  other  nation.  The 
reason  may  be  that  they  have  not  been  prolific  of  good 
poetry  in  verse,  and  have  instead  reserved  their  poetry  for 
prose,  a  more  natural  medium  than  Alexandrine  lines. 

Fenelon  was  one  of  the  first  moderns  who  attacked  verse. 
In  two  critical  works,  Dialogues  on  Eloquence  and  Letters 
to  the  French  Academy  (there  is  an  English  translation  of 
both,  out  of  print),  he  emphasized  the  insignificant  part 
played  by  versification  in  poetry.  He  held  that  there  was 
no  true  eloquence  without  a  due  mixture  of  poetry,  that 
poetry  was  the  very  soul  of  eloquence.  He  said  that  there 
were  many  poets  who  were  poetical  without  making  verses, 
and  he  considered  versification  distinct  from  poetry.  In 
his  definition  of  poetry  he  excluded  a  consideration  of 
versification.  He  thought  the  perfection  of  French  verse 
impossible,  that  versification  loses  more  than  it  gains  by 
rhyme,  and  that  French  poets  were  cramped  by  versifica- 
tion. He  wanted  superfluous  ornaments  removed  and 
the  necessary  parts  turned  into  natural  ornaments.  Still 
he  did  not  insist  on  a  complete  abandonment  of  rhyme,  but 
wanted  greater  freedom.  His  biographer,  St.  Cyr,  says 
that  Fenelon  wanted  to  abolish  verse  altogether  in  French 
poetry.  Fenelon  also  wrote  a  novel  in  prose  poetry  in 
1699,  Telemaque.  But  prose  poetry  existed  in  France 
before  him,  in  old  romances  like  the  story  of  Aucassin  and 

*  See  the  selections  in  Pastels  in  Prose  ( 1890) ,  and  the  sympa- 
thetic introduction  by  William  Dean  Howells. 


PROSE  THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ECSTASY     87 

Nicolette  and  in  Bossuet's  funeral  orations.  His  example 
was  followed  by  Sainte  Pierre,  in  Paul  and  Virginia,  by 
Prevost  in  Manon  Lescaut,  by  Rousseau  and  especially  by 
Chateaubriand  in  Atala,  The  Genius  of  Christianity  and 
The  Martyrs.  Unfortunately,  Fenelon  insisted  in  intro- 
ducing the  cliches  of  verse  into  prose;  artificial  and  un- 
natural language  hence  ruined  some  of  his  work  and  as- 
sisted in  bringing  the  term  prose  poetry  into  contempt. 

The  French  have  always  regarded  the  poet  in  a  broader 
sense  than  have  the  English.  The  article  on  poetry  in 
the  French  Encyclopedia  deals  with  prose  poems  as  well 
as  with  verse  poems.  Victor  Hugo  in  his  Shakespeare, 
when  he  calls  the  lists  of  poets,  mentions  prose  writers 
like  Diderot,  Rousseau,  Balzac,  Chateaubriand,  George 
Sand,  Le  Sage  and  Cervantes.  He  who  was  himself  a 
great  poet  knew  that  poetry  did  not  depend  on  metre. 

Eugene  Veron,  the  great  French  critic,  author  of  a  valu- 
able work  on  ^Esthetics  (fortunately  translated  into  Eng- 
lish), also  takes  a  broad  conception  of  the  term  poetry.  He 
says  that  it  would  be  absurd  to  deny  Moliere's  L'Avare  is 
poetry  because  it  is  in  prose,  for  poetical,  creative  imagina- 
tion and  personal  emotions  are  at  work  here.  He  states 
that  there  was  poetry  in  the  story  of  Don  Juan  before 
Corneille  put  it  in  verse.  Versification,  he  urges,  does  not 
constitute  poetry.  He  sees  that  verse  would  not  have  im- 
proved such  prose  poems  as  Paul  and  Virginia,  La  Mare 
au  Diable,  or  UOiseau  (Michelet),  and  he  places  in  the 
front  rank  of  poetry  passages  from  Demosthenes,  Cicero, 
Bossuet  (no  doubt  referring  to  some  of  the  famous 
funeral  orations)  and  Mirabeau.  He  also  says  it  is  im- 
possible to  refuse  to  see  poetic  character  in  the  novel,  for 
this  deals  with  the  creation  of  character  and  the  portrayal 
of  passions. 


88     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

I  do  not  wish  to  go  into  the  prose  poetry  written  by 
other  nations,  for  every  literature  is  full  of  it. 

There  is  a  growing  tendency  in  England  to  encourage 
prose  poetry.*  De  Quincey  having  made  a  special  plea  for 
impassioned  prose  is  looked  upon  as  the  father  of  it, 
though  there  was  prose  poetry  in  English  literature  from 
the  earliest  times;  Malory,  Sidney,  Sir  Thomas  Browne, 
Raleigh,  Drummond,  Milton,  Bunyan,  Taylor  and  Fuller 
were  great  prose  poets. 

John  Stuart  Mill  and  Lord  Beaconsfield  both  recognized 
the  utterly  negligible  role  of  metre  in  determining  the 
nature  of  poetry.  In  an  early  essay,  originally  published 
before  he  was  thirty  and  collected  with  another  under  the 
title  Poetry  and  Its  Varities,  Mill  gives  us  his  definition 
of  poetry.  Guided  by  a  statement  of  the  author  of  the 
Corn  Law  Rhymes,  Ebenezer  Elliot,  that  poetry  is  impas- 
sioned truth,  and  by  another  definition  from  Blackwood's, 
that  poetry  is  "man's  thought  tinged  by  his  feelings,"  he 
says,  "Every  truth  which  a  human  being  can  enunciate, 
every  thought,  even  every  outward  impression,  which  can 
enter  into  his  consciousness,  may  become  poetry  when 
shown  through  any  impassioned  medium,  when  invested 
with  the  coloring  of  joy,  or  grief,  or  pity,  or  affection,  or 
admiration,  or  reverence,  or  awe,  or  even  hatred,  or  terror : 
and,  unless  so  colored,  nothing,  be  it  as  interesting  as  it 
may,  is  poetry."  There  is  nothing  said  in  this  definition 
about  rhythm  or  metre,  and  indeed  Mill  regarded  as  the 
vulgarest  of  all  any  definition  of  poetry  which  confounds 
it  with  metrical  composition. 

An  idea  emotionally  treated  becomes  poetry  whether  in 
prose  or  verse,  whether  rhythmical  or  not.  Mill  under- 

*  See  The  Chapbook,  April,  1921,  London.  Poetry  in  Prose, 
Three  Essays  by  T.  S.  Eliot,  Frederic  Manning,  Richard  Al- 
dington. 


PROSE  THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ECSTASY     89 

stood  that,  yet  he  erred  when  he  assigned  a  minor  role  to 
the  emotions  excited  by  the  incidents  in  prose  fiction, 
though  it  is  true  that  the  emotions  of  excitement  wakened 
by  the  mere  novel  of  adventure  are  indicative  of  a  lower 
order  of  poetry.  It  is  to  be  regretted,  however,  that  about 
five  years  later  he  somewhat  modified  his  main  views. 

Prose  poetry  was  consciously  written  by  Lord  Beacons- 
field,  who  tells  us  in  the  early  preface  to  his  novel,  Alroy, 
that  he  was  trying  to  write  rhythmical  prose  poetry  in 
that  novel.  He  did  not  always  succeed,  but  throughout 
all  his  novels  are  found  many  excellent  prose  poems.  He 
was  writing  prose  poetry  in  the  early  eighteen  thirties  be- 
fore Baudelaire,  and  in  some  of  his  tales,  like  Pompanilla, 
we  have  prose  poems.  He  often  became  bombastic,  but  he 
was  a  poet,  nevertheless. 

Later  English  critics  have  returned  to  the  subject  of 
prose  poetry. 

In  his  Aspects  of  Poetry  Professor  John  C.  Shairp  says 
that  he  grants  "that  the  old  limits  between  prose  and 
poetry  tend  to  disappear."  He  concludes  his  book  with 
two  chapters  on  prose  poets,  on  Carlyle  and  Newman. 
And  Courthope,  worshipper  of  metre  that  he  is,  concludes 
his  History  of  English  Poetry  with  a  chapter  on  the 
poetry  in  the  Waverly  Novels.  We  also  recall  that  Bage- 
hot  could  see  little  difference  between  Tennyson's  novels 
in  verse  and  George  Eliot's  novels  in  prose. 

A  great  critic  like  Pater  maintained  the  rights  of  the 
poet  in  prose.  In  his  essay  on  Style  he  said  "Prose  will 
exert  in  due  measure  all  the  varied  charms  of  poetry  down 
to  the  rhythm  which,  as  in  Cicero,  Michelet,  or  Newman, 
gives  its  musical  value  to  every  syllable." 

The  first  lengthy  and  systematic  plea  for  prose  poetry 
I  know  of  in  English,  outside  of  Disraeli's  and  De 
Quincey's  modest  apologies  for  writing  in  this  manner, 


90  THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

was  made  by  David  Masson  in  an  essay  on  Prose  and 
Verse:  De  Quincey,  published  as  a  review  of  De  Quincey 
in  1854.  De  Quincey 's  preface,  pleading  for  impassioned 
prose,  suggested  Masson's  essay.  Masson  had,  however, 
dwelt  on  the  poetic  side  of  prose  the  year  before  in  an 
article  on  Dallas's  Poetics,  called  Theories  of  Poetry. 
Both  of  Masson's  essays  are  to  be  found  in  his  Words- 
worth, Shelley,  Keats  and  Other  Essays.  Masson  very 
ingeniously  asks  why  we  are  not  allowed  to  write  prose  in 
the  manner  that  Milton  writes  in  verse,  or  in  the  manner 
of  ./Eschylus  in  prose  translation.  He  concludes  that 
poetry  and  prose  are  not  two  entirely  separate  spheres, 
but  intersecting  and  penetrating.  To-day  we  go  even 
farther  than  Masson  and  urge  that  prose,  except  in  short 
lyrics  when  verse  may  be  used,  should  be  the  sole  language 
of  passion  and  the  imagination.  He  vindicates  De 
Quincey's  right  to  use  impassioned  prose ;  he  quotes  as  an 
example  of  prose  poetry  a  beautiful  passage  from  the 
conclusion  of  Milton's  pamphlet,  Causes  That  Have  Hin- 
dered the  Reformation  in  England,  and  mentions  especially 
Jean  Paul  Richter,  the  prose  poet  who  was  responsible  for 
the  prose  poetry  of  two  disciples,  De  Quincey  and 
Carlyle.  Richter's  Christ  and  the  Universe  is  highly  re- 
garded by  him  as  prose  poetry. 

Masson's  prediction  that  the  time  was  coming  when  the 
best  prose  should  more  resemble  verse  than  it  had  done  in 
the  past,  and  that  the  best  verse  should  not  disdain  a 
certain  resemblance  to  prose,  is  being  fulfilled.  Remember 
Masson  wrote  before  the  Leaves  of  Grass  appeared,  and 
before  the  vogue  of  free  verse. 

Yet  his  viewpoint  was  severely  criticized  by  a  scholar 
like  John  Earle,  whose  English  Prose  contains  an  at- 
tack on  prose  poetry.  Earle  says  that  prose  poetry  is 
found  chiefly  in  ages  of  literary  decadence  like  the  Latin 


PROSE  THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ECSTASY     91, 

Silver  Age  in  writers  from  Tacitus  to  Boethius.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  found  as  well  in  the  golden  ages  of  literature, 
as,  for  example,  in  Sidney's  Arcadia,  which  he  himself 
quotes  from,  in  Plato,  in  Pascal,  in  Dante's  prose.  It  is 
strange  that  this  view  of  Earle's  should  still  largely  pre- 
vail. Poetry  and  prose  are  still  regarded  by  academic 
scholars  like  Earle,  Saintsbury,  Courthope,  Bosanquet 
Watts-Dunton  and  Gummere  as  two  distinct  branches  of 
literature.  Earle  is  right  only  when  he  objects  to  the 
cliches  of  verse  in  prose,  but  to-day  we  object  to  all  cliches. 

Poetic  prose,  however,  should  not  be  used  on  every  occa- 
sion, but  only  when  an  ecstasy  is  to  be  expressed.  And, 
above  all,  it  should  be  avoided — and  this  is  how  prose 
poetry  got  into  disrepute — in  expressing  sentimental  emo- 
tions, commonplace  ideas,  and  the  merely  popular.  When 
we  read  in  eloquent  prose,  the  grand  eulogies  on  the  flag, 
on  the  purity  and  redeeming  virtues  of  mother-love,  on  the 
dignity  of  toil,  on  the  glory  of  dying  for  one's  country,  on 
the  goodness  of  God,  etc.,  themes  which  have  been  cele- 
brated so  often  that  they  are  nauseous  to  us  because 
nothing  new  is  said,  then  we  see  how  ridiculous  prose 
poetry  may  become. 

But  as  Pater  says — impassioned  prose  has  become  the 
special  and  opportune  art  of  the  modern  world,  and  it  can 
exert  all  the  varied  charms  of  poetry  down  to  the  rhythm. 

"The  muse  of  prose-literature,"  says  Masson,  "has  been 
hardly  dealt  with.  We  see  not  why,  in  prose,  there  should 
not  be  much  of  that  license  in  the  fantastic,  that  measured 
riot,  the  right  of  whimsy,  that  unbalanced  dalliance  with 
the  extreme  and  the  beautiful,  which  the  world  allows,  by 
prescription,  to  verse.  Why  may  not  prose  chase  forest- 
nymphs  and  see  little  green-eyed  elves,  and  delight  in 
peonies  and  musk-roses,  and  invoke  the  stars,  and  roll 
mists  about  the  hills,  and  watch  the  sea  thundering  through 


92     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

caverns  and  dashing  against  the  promontories  ?  Why,  in 
prose,  quail  from  the  grand  or  ghastly  in  the  one  hand,  or 
blush  with  shame  at  too  much  of  the  exquisite  on  the 
other?  Is  Prose  made  of  iron?  Must  it  never  weep, 
never  laugh,  never  linger  to  look  at  a  butterfly,  never  ride 
at  a  gallop  over  the  downs?" 

Yet  George  Moore,  a  great  poet  in  prose  himself,  tells 
us  in  his  Avowals  that  the  greatness  of  English  genius  does 
not  appear  in  its  prose,  but  in  its  poetry,  i.  e.,  in  verse. 
The  greatness  of  English  genius  is  in  its  poetry,  but  in  the 
poetry  of  its  prose  as  well  as  in  the  poetry  of  its  verse. 
It  appears  in  the  ordinary  dialect  of  its  novels  and  prose 
plays. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  poetic  prose  has  always  been  used. 
It  is  found  in  the  earliest  as  well  as  the  later  literature  of 
every  nation.  The  Bible,  Oriental  Literature,  the  medieval 
romances,  early  Saxon  prose  are  full  of  it.  It  made  a  re- 
appearance with  renewed  force  in  the  romantic  movement 
that  spread  over  England,  Germany  and  France  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  and  early  part  of  the  nine- 
teenth centuries.  In  an  age  like  the  romantic,  when  the 
right  to  live  and  express  emotions  was  pleaded,  poetic 
prose,  seeking  restraint  from  metre,  was  especially  ap- 
propriate. George  Brandes  has  studied  this  movement 
in  his  Main  Currents.  Many  of  the  leading  writers  of  the 
romantic  period  used  impassioned  prose.  Saintsbury  has 
found  much  poetry  even  in  the  prose  of  John  Wilson,  who 
is  not  much  read,  one  who  was  to  some  extent  an  enemy 
of  the  romantic  movement,  and  Saintsbury  reprints  in  his 
Specimens  of  English  Prose  Style,  Wilson's  The  Fairy's 
Funeral. 

America  has  contributed  greatly  to  the  development  of 
prose  poetry.  Hawthorne,  Poe  and  Emerson  were  the 
first  great  masters  in  prose  poetry  we  have  had,  and  I 


PROSE  THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ECSTASY     93 

doubt  if  as  poets  they  have  been  surpassed  by  any  of 
our  metrical  verse  writers.  One  of  the  finest  poems  in 
American  literature  is  undoubtedly  Hawthorne's  re- 
flections of  his  lonely  life  in  the  Ivory  Tower,  when  he  re- 
visited his  old  chamber  in  Salem  where  he  spent  so  many 
years.  The  famous  passage  from  his  diary,  quoted  in  all 
big  biographies,  is  as  great  a  poem,  though  in  prose. 

Emerson's  essays  are  studied  with  prose  poems.  I 
shall  mention  only  one,  the  address  to  the  poet,  at  the  con- 
clusion of  the  essay  on  "The  Poet." 

The  Hawthorne  passage  is  as  follows : 

Salem,  Oct.  4th.  Union  Street  (Family  Mansion). — 
....  Here  I  sit  in  my  old  accustomed  chamber,  where  I 
used  to  sit  in  days  gone  by.  .  .  .  Here  I  have  written 
many  tales, — many  that  have  been  burned  to  ashes,  many 
that  doubtless  deserved  the  same  fate.  This  claims  to  be 
called  a  haunted  chamber,  for  thousands  upon  thousands 
of  visions  have  appeared  to  me  in  it ;  and  some  few  of  them 
have  become  visible  to  the  world.  If  ever  I  should  have  a 
biographer,  he  ought  to  make  great  mention  of  this 
chamber  in  my  memoirs,  because  so  much  of  my  lonely 
youth  was  wasted  here,  and  here  my  mind  and  character 
were  formed ;  and  here  I  have  been  glad  and  hopeful,  and 
here  I  have  been  despondent.  And  here  I  sat  a  long,  long 
time,  waiting  patiently  for  the  world  to  know  me,  and 
sometimes  wondering  why  it  did  not  know  me  sooner,  or 
whether  it  would  ever  know  me  at  all, — at  least,  till  I  were 
in  my  grave.  And  sometimes  it  seemed  as  if  I  were  al- 
ready in  the  grave,  with  only  life  enough  to  be  chilled  and 
benumbed.  But  oftener  I  was  happy, — at  least,  as  happy 
as  I  then  knew  how  to  be,  or  was  aware  of  the  possibility 
of  being.  By  and  by,  the  world  found  me  out  in  my  lonely 
chamber,  and  called  me  forth, — not,  indeed,  with  a  loud 
roar  of  acclamation,  but  rather  with  a  still,  small  voice, — 
and  forth  I  went,  but  found  nothing  in  the  world  that  I 
thought  preferable  to  my  old  solitude  till  now.  .  .  .  And 
now  I  begin  to  understand  why  I  was  imprisoned  so  many 
years  in  this  lonely  chamber,  and  why  I  could  never  break 


94     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

through  the  viewless  bolts  and  bars ;  for  if  I  had  sooner 
made  my  escape  into  the  world,  I  should  have  grown  hard 
and  rough,  and  been  covered  with  earthly  dust,  and  my 
heart  might  have  become  callous  by  rude  encounters  with 
the  multitude.  .  .  .  But  living  in  solitude  till  the  fulness  of 
time  was  come,  I  still  kept  the  dew  of  my  youth  and  the 
freshness  of  my  heart.  ...  I  used  to  think  I  could 
imagine  all  passions,  all  feelings,  and  states  of  the  heart 
and  mind;  but  how  little  did  I  know!  .  .  .  Indeed,  we 
are  but  shadows ;  we  are  not  endowed  with  real  life,  and 
all  that  seems  most  real  about  us  is  but  the  thinnest  sub- 
stance of  a  dream, — till  the  heart  be  touched.  That  touch 
creates  us, — then  we  begin  to  be, — thereby  we  are  beings  of 
reality  and  inheritors  of  eternity.  .  .  . 

And  the  Emerson  poem  in  prose  is  given  herewith : 
O  poet!  a  new  nobility  is  conferred  in  groves  and 
pastures,  and  not  in  castles  or  by  the  sword-blade  any 
longer.  The  conditions  are  hard,  but  equal.  Thou  shalt 
leave  the  world,  and  know  the  muse  only.  Thou  shalt  not 
know  any  longer  the  times,  customs,  graces,  politics,  or 
opinions  of  men,  but  shalt  take  all  from  the  muse.  For 
the  time  of  towns  is  tolled  from  the  world  by  funereal 
chimes,  but  in  nature  the  universal  hours  are  counted  by 
succeeding  tribes  of  animals  and  plants,  and  by  growth  of 
joy  on  joy.  God  wills  also  that  thou  abdicate  a  manifold 
and  duplex  life,  and  that  thou  be  content  that  others  speak 
for  thee.  Others  shall  be  thy  gentlemen  and  shall  repre- 
sent all  courtesy  and  worldly  life  for  thee ;  others  shall  do 
the  great  and  resounding  actions  also.  Thou  shalt  lie 
close  hid  with  nature,,  and  canst  not  be  afforded  to  the 
Capitol  or  the  Exchange.  The  world  is  full  of  renuncia- 
tions and  apprenticeships,  and  this  is  thine ;  thou  must  pass 
for  a  fool  and  a  churl  for  a  long  season.  This  is  the 
screen  and  sheath  in  which  Pan  has  protected  his  well-be- 
loved flower,  and  thou  shalt  be  known  only  to  thine  own, 
and  they  shall  console  thee  with  tenderest  love.  And  thou 
shalt  not  be  able  to  rehearse  the  names  of  thy  friends  in 
thy  verse,  for  an  old  shame  before  the  holy  ideal.  And 
this  is  the  reward ;  that  the  ideal  shall  be  real  to  thee,  and 
the  impressions  of  the  actual  world  shall  fall  like  sum- 


PROSE  THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ECSTASY      95 

mer  rain,  copious,  but  not  troublesome  to  thy  invulner- 
able essence.  Thou  shalt  have  the  sole  land  for  thy 
park  and  manor,  the  sea  for  thy  bath  and  navigation,  with- 
out tax  and  without  envy ;  the  woods  and  the  rivers  thou 
shalt  own,  and  thou  shalt  possess  that  wherein  others  are 
only  tenants  and  boarders.  Thou  true  land-lord !  sea-lord ! 
air-lord !  Wherever  snow  falls  or  water  flows  or  birds 
fly,  wherever  day  and  night  meet  in  twilight,  wherever  the 
blue  heaven  is  hung  by  clouds  or  sown  with  stars,  where- 
ever  are  forms  with  transparent  boundaries,  wherever  are 
outlets  into  celestial  space,  wherever  is  danger,  and  awe, 
and  love, — there  is  Beauty,  plenteous  as  rain,  shed  for 
thee,  and  though  thou  shouldst  walk  the  world  over,  thou 
shalt  not  be  able  to  find  a  condition  inopportune  or 
ignoble. 


CHAPTER  V 

PROSE  PRECEDES  VERSE   HISTORICALLY 

ONE  of  the  frequent  sayings  in  the  text  books  of  literary 
history  is  that  the  literature  of  a  nation  always  begins  with 
poetry  in  verse,  and  that  good  prose  is  a  later  development. 
England  and  Greece  are  especially  cited  as  examples, 
since  Homer  lived  before  Herodotus  and  the  author  of 
Beowulf  before  King  Alfred. 

Scholars  follow  one  another  often  like  sheep.  When  a 
man  of  prominence  utters  an  idea,  it  is  taken  up  by  a 
disciple  and  soon  becomes  a  convention.  The  academic 
critics  and  professors  usually  enshrine  the  idea  and  it  be- 
comes a  heresy  to  question  it.  The  best  illustration  of  this 
is  the  almost  universal  adherence  given  to  the  idea  that 
verse  poetry  came  before  prose,  a  view  first  set  forth  by  the 
geographer  Strabo  in  speaking  of  Homer  in  the  beginning 
of  his  Geography.  His  views  were  not  entertained,  I  be- 
lieve, by  Plato  or  Aristotle.  The  passage  is  worth  quoting 
as  I  know  of  no  other  in  literature  that  has  raised  so  much 
confusion  and  misapprehension  as  to  the  nature  of  poetry: 

Prose  discourse — I  mean  artistic  prose — is,  I  may  say, 
an  imitation  of  poetic  discourse ;  for  poetry  as  an  art  first 
came  upon  the  scene  and  was  first  to  win  approval.  Then 
came  Cadmus,  Pherecydes,  Hecataeus  and  their  followers, 
with  prose  writing  in  which  they  imitated  the  poetic  art, 
abandoning  the  use  of  metre,  but  in  other  respects  pre- 
serving the  qualities  of  poetry.  Then  subsequent  writers 
took  away,  each  in  his  turn,  something  of  these  qualities, 

96 


PROSE  PRECEDES  VERSE  HISTORICALLY    97 

and  brought  prose  down  to  its  present  form,  as  from  a 
sublime  height.  In  the  same  way  we  might  say  that 
comedy  took  its  structure  from  tragedy,  but  that  it  also 
has  been  degraded  from  the  sublime  height  of  tragedy  to 
its  present  "prose-like"  style,  as  it  is  called.  Geography, 
i.  2.  6. 

Most  critics  have  accepted  this  view.  Scaliger,  how- 
ever, in  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  repudiated  it. 
He  asked  whether  the  first  so-called  poems,  the  metrical 
records  in  temples,  antedated  everyday  speech. 

Strabo  was  led  to  his  error  by  the  fact  that  the  Iliad 
and  Odyssey  were  among  the  very  few  survivals  of  the 
end  of  an  epoch  of  verse  poetry,  and  also  because  some  of 
the  pre-Socratic  philsophers  like  Parmenides  and  Em- 
pedocles  wrote  in  verse.  Now  scholars  are  all  agreed  that 
the  authors  of  the  Homeric  poems  had  many  predecessors 
in  the  art  of  composing  poetry  for  many  ages  back  down 
into  legendary  times.  The  perfected  poems  in  a  pattern 
as  regular  as  the  dactylic  hexameter  were  a  stage  of  evo- 
lution and  did  not  spring  up  out  of  the  darkness  of  an 
age  which  had  no  literature.  The  Delphians  claim  that 
their  first  priestess  invented  the  dactylic  hexameter;  the 
Delians  said  that  Olen,  a  mythical  singer  from  Asia 
Minor,  first  used  it,  but  it  was,  of  course,  a  development. 
Prose  was  not  a  development  from  verse,  as  Strabo 
thought.  On  the  contrary,  all  verse,  including  Greek 
verse,  was  a  development  from  rhythmical  prose.  The 
stories  about  Troy  were  first  told  in  prose;  next  they 
were  sung  in  ballads ;  then  they  were  combined  into  epics. 

Musaeus,  one  of  the  earliest  legendary  poets,  ante- 
dating Homer,  was  said  to  have  composed  prose. 

As  the  earliest  literatures  of  most  nations  have  not 
been  preserved  to  us,  we  can  examine  various  literatures 
in  their  earliest  stages  only ;  we  shall  in  almost  every  case 


98     THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

find  that  these  are  written  in  rhythmical  prose  or  possess 
the  beginning  of  a  pattern  hardly  differing  from  rhythmic 
prose.  It  is  against  all  human  experience  to  conclude  that 
an  elaborate  work  of  art  following  laws  of  measure  could 
precede  the  production  in  prose  that  represents  the  tran- 
scription of  the  natural  language  of  people  which  is  in 
prose.  We  shall  discover,  however,  that  in  some  cases, 
like  the  Sagas  of  Iceland,  we  have  in  prose,  the  very  first 
poetical  compositions,  while  other  poetical  compositions, 
like  the  epics  of  Ireland,  show  us  the  prose  along  with  the 
metrical  development  in  the  body  of  the  compositions. 

First  let  us  briefly  note  the  characteristics  of  the  poetry 
of  natural  savages.  This  is  always  in  rhythmical  prose, 
or  free  verse,  and  this  may  be  seen  in  the  anthology  of 
Indian  poems  collected  by  Cronyn  in  The  Path  of  the 
Rainbow.  The  writer  of  the  preface,  Mary  Austin,  ven- 
tures the  opinion  that  the  writers  of  free  verse  poems  in 
America  are  merely  returning  to  the  primitive  form  of 
poetry  written  by  the  native  Americans.  Similarly  the 
emotional  outbursts  of  native  African  tribes'  are  in 
rhythmical  prose.  The  only  form  of  pattern  in  the  poems 
of  savages  as  well  as  of  people  in  an  early  stage  of 
civilization  is  a  tendency  to  repeat  the  same  phrase.  But 
in  their  most  emotional  stories,  fables  and  legends,  in 
their  proverbs  and  crude  moral  and  religious  philosophiz- 
ing they  use  plain  prose.  This  prose,  especially  that  of  the 
legends,  contains  their  first  poetry,  and  of  course  there  is  no 
pattern  here.  The  pattern,  assuming  the  form  of  irregular 
rhythm  and  repetition  of  phrase,  appears  chiefly  in  hymns 
and  chants,  and  these  are  only  two  aspects  of  poetry. 

The  first  change  that  occurs  in  a  later  stage  of  the 
hymn  is  that  the  phrase  or  clause,  instead  of  being  re- 
peated exactly,  is  varied  by  a  change  of  words,  having  a 
similar  import.  In  short,  we  have  the  beginning  of 


PROSE  PRECEDES  VERSE  HISTORICALLY     99 

parallelism.  There  is  parallelism  in  the  poems  of  all  early 
civilizations.  It  reaches  its  fullest  development  in  an  age 
of  civilization,  as  we  observe  in  the  poems  of  the  Bible. 

Probably  the  oldest  poetry  we  have  is  that  of  the  Egyp- 
tians and  the  Babylonians,  and  there  is  no  regular  metre 
of  any  kind  in  these  except  parallelism.  The  works  are 
all  irregularly  rhythmical  and  in  many  cases  the  lines  are 
arranged  like  modern  free  verse,  to  call  attention  to  this 
irregular  rhythm. 

Dr.  James  H.  Breasted,  speaking  of  the  Pyramid  Texts, 
in  his  Religion  and  Thought  in  Ancient  Egypt,  says: 
"Among  the  oldest  literary  fragments  in  the  collection  are 
the  religious  hymns  and  these  exhibit  an  early  poetic 
form,  that  of  couplets  displaying  parallelism  in  arrange- 
ment of  word,  and  thought — the  form  which  is  familiar  to 
all  in  the  Hebrew  Psalms  as  'parallelism  of  members.'  It 
is  carried  back  by  its  employment  in  the  Pyramid  Texts 
in  the  fourth  millennium  B.  C,  by  far  earlier  than  its 
appearance  anywhere  else.  It  is  indeed  the  oldest  of  all 
literary  forms  known  to  us.  Its  use  is  not  confined  to  the 
hymns  mentioned,  but  appears  also  in  other  portions  of 
the  Pyramid  Texts,  where  it  is,  however,  not  usually  so 
highly  developed." 

All  the  poems  of  the  Egyptians  were  written  simply  in 
rough,  irregular  lines  of  rhythmical  prose.  Read  the 
famous  Song  of  the  Harper  where  an  epicurean  life  is 
praised ;  it  is  impassioned  rhythmical  prose.  Take  up  the 
love  poems,  elegies,  fairy  tales  and  prayers  of  the  ancient 
Egyptians.  They  have  no  device  of  metre,  rhythm  or 
rhyme.  The  only  pattern  is  the  parallelism.  A  few 
hymns  are  arranged  in  stanzas  of  ten  lines  with  a  break 
in  the  middle  of  each  line,  but  no  definite  metrical  laws 
existed  for  the  lengths  of  lines  or  number  of  feet,  so  as  to 
make  a  uniform  rhythmical  pattern  of  the  composition. 


100        THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

The  Egyptians  wrote  much  of  their  poetry  in  parallel- 
istic  prose.  If  we  do  not  know  how  they  pronounced 
their  vowels,  we  know  enough  of  their  literature  to  see 
that  regularity  of  accents  and  equal  numbers  of  syllables 
were  not  characteristic  of  their  poetry. 

The  epic  of  Gilgash,  the  chief  poem  of  the  Babylonians, 
and  the  various  hymns  translated  by  Professor  Langdon, 
are  all  in  irregular  rhythmical  prose.  These  may  be  older 
than  the  poetry  of  the  Egyptians,  but  in  form  they  are  a 
great  deal  alike — simply  prose  with  a  rough  rhythm,  fre- 
quent parallelism,  but  no  uniform  device.  The  lines  are 
arranged  often  like  free  verse.  "It  is  difficult  to  draw  the 
line  between  their  poetry  and  the  higher  style  of  prose," 
says  Francis  Brown.*  "There  is  a  primitive  freedom  and 
lack  of  artificiality  in  the  poetic  movement,  much  greater 
than  in  the  Hebrew  Psalms.  Metre  is  felt  and  observed 
at  times,  but  then  abandoned — the  thought  carrying  itself 
along  beyond  the  strict  boundaries  of  metrical  division." 

We  have  seen  that  critics  find  in  the  hymns  of  the 
Egyptians  and  Babylonians  the  irregular  rhythm  and 
parallelisms  of  the  Psalms,  in  short,  impassioned  rhyth- 
mical prose. 

Let  us  now  examine  the  form  of  the  poetry  of  the 
Bible. 

W.  Robertson  Smith  in  an  able  article,  "The  Poetry  of 
the  Old  Testament,"  posthumously  collected  in  Lectures 
and  Essays,  showed  that  Hebrew  poetry  was  rhythmic 
without  possessing  laws  of  metre,  for  the  rhythm  of 
thought  created  a  naturally  rhythmic  prose.  Rhythm  is 
the  measured  rise  and  fall  of  feeling  and  utterance,  to 
which  the  rhythm  of  sound  is  subordinate.  Prosodic 
rules  are  not  necessary,  "for  the  words  employed  naturally 

*  '"The  Religious  Poetry  of  Babylonia."  Presbyterian  Review, 
1888,  p.  76. 


PROSE  PRECEDES  VERSE  HISTORICALLY    101 

group  themselves  in  balanced  members,  in  which  the 
undulations  of  the  thought  are  represented  to  the  ear." 
When  poetry  becomes  more  artificial  people  do  not  trust 
to  the  rhythm  of  thought  but  attribute  importance  to 
metre  and  finally  "we  are  apt  to  forget  its  essential  sub- 
ordination to  rhythmic  flow  of  thought." 

There  has  been  no  more  amusing  game  than  the  ever- 
renewed  attempt  to  find  metres  in  the  .Bible.  One  of  the 
most  ridiculous  claims,  at  one  time  widely  in  vogue,  was 
that  the  Greek  metres  were  to  be  found  in  the  Bible. 
Vossius  and  the  younger  Scaliger  denounced  these  views, 
first  advanced  by  Josephus  and  Philo. 

We  are  beginning  to  see  to-day  that  the  chief  character- 
istic of  the  form  of  the  poetry  in  the  Bible  is  parallelism 
in  irregular  rhythm. 

Dr.  Konig  and  other  scholars  agree  that  it  is  this  irregu- 
lar rhythm  based  on  accent  of  syllable  that  distinguishes 
Hebrew  poetry.  Each  line  had  a  number  of  accented 
syllables  ranging  from  two  to  five,  but  the  lines  did  not 
regularly  or  alternately  have  the  same  number  of  ac- 
cented syllables.  The  unaccented  syllables  were  also  not 
counted.  The  poem  became  nothing  more  than  rhythmi- 
cal prose.  Sir  George  A.  Smith  says,  in  his  The  Early 
Poetry  of  Israel,  that  the  Hebrew  poets  indulged  deliber- 
ately in  the  metrical  irregularities  of  verse.  They  devi- 
ated more  than  Shakespeare,  who  did  not  always  confine 
himself  to  the  iambic  foot  and  pentameter  line  in  his 
blank  verse.  "In  every  form  of  Oriental  art  we  trace  the 
influence  of  what  may  be  called  Symmetrophobia,  an  in- 
stinctive aversion  to  absolute  symmetry,  which  if  it  knows 
no  better,  will  express  itself  in  arbitrary  and  even  violent 
disturbances  of  the  style  or  pattern  of  the  work."  The 
more  correct  view,  however,  is  that  this  symmetry  was 
never  intended  by  the  Hebrew  poets;  that  the  irregular 


102         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

arrangement  of  accents  with  occasional  symmetry  was 
the  rule. 

Both  Smith  and  Konig  cite  G.  Dalman,  who  says  that 
this  irregular  rhythm  is  found  in  the  songs  of  Arabia  to- 
day sung  in  Palestine.  These  songs  are  made  up  of  lines 
of  from  two  to  five  syllables,  of  which  one  to  four  are  un- 
accented, the  poet  being  bound  by  no  definite  numbers. 
This  is  the  irregular  rhythm  of  Hebrew  poetry,  and  also, 
by  the  way,  of  the  Nibelungen  Lied.  It  is  the  rhythm  of 
all  early  poetry,  the  Egyptian  and  Babylonian. 

But  even  those  who  have  given  up  the  hope  of  finding 
metres  in  Hebrew  poetry  insist  that  a  regular  metrical 
form  was  used  for  the  Kinoth  or  lamentations.  Professor 
Budde  held  that  the  Kinoth  had  a  regular  metre.  But  the 
discovery  merely  amounted  to  this :  that  a  long  line  was 
followed  regularly  by  a  short  line.  There  was  no  uni- 
formity of  accented  syllables  in  successive  or  alternate 
lines.  There  are  two,  three  and  four  syllables  in  them 
almost  at  the  will  of  the  poet. 

We  may  then  conclude  that  rhythm  is  never  regular  in 
the  poetry  of  the  Bible. 

All  ancient  Hebrew  poetry  was  in  rhythmical  prose; 
prophecies,  elegies,  songs,  hymns,  parables,  and  dialogues. 
The  irregular  rhythmical  form  was  a  natural  outflow  of 
the  ecstatic  element. 

But  what  about  the  parallelism?  Does  this  make  the 
Bible  verse?  Bishop  Lowth,  in  his  Lectures  on  the 
Sacred  Poetry  of  the  Hebrews,  delivered  at  Oxford  in 
the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  no  doubt  performed 
great  service  in  calling  attention  to  the  parallelisms  of 
Hebrew  poetry.  The  importance  of  these  in  ancient 
Hebrew  poetry  has,  however,  been  overestimated.  Par- 
allelism did  not  create  poetry,  but  was  often  its  garment. 
There  are  passages  employing  parallelisms  that  are  not 


PROSE  PRECEDES  VERSE  HISTORICALLY    103 

poetry,  while  many  poems  exist  in  which  these  are  not 
used.  Dr.  Edward  Konig,  in  his  article  on  Hebrew 
Poetry  in  the  Jewish  Encyclopedia,  concludes  that  the 
poets  of  the  Bible  were  not  bound  by  parallelism,  often 
setting  it  aside  and  not  using  it. 

In  his  account  of  The  Literary  Study  of  the  Bible, 
Professor  Richard  G.  Moulton  has  given  an  excellent 
study  of  the  parallelism  of  the  Bible,  but  he  admits  that 
parallelisms  of  clause  are  also  prose  devices.  If  parallel- 
ism, then,  is  also  a  property  of  prose,  we  cannot  say  that 
parallelism  alone  is  sufficient  to  distinguish  poetry  from 
prose,  or  even  Hebrew  poetry  from  Hebrew  prose. 
Moulton  finds  that  prose  and  poetry  overlap  each  other 
in  the  Bible.  All  this  merely  proves  that  parallelisms 
were  no  doubt  anciently  used  to  differentiate  prose  litera- 
ture conveying  emotions  from  prose  literature  barren  of 
feeling.  But  parallelism  was  not  indispensable  to  the 
literature  of  ecstasy. 

Yet  we  cannot  deny  the  fact  that  parallelisms  occur  in 
the  Bible  with  such  frequency  as  almost  to  have  become  a 
pattern  of  Hebrew  poetry.  Bishop  Lowth  thought  the 
origin  of  the  parallelism  was  due  to  the  system  of  chant- 
ing hymns  where  there  was  a  response  by  the  congrega- 
tion, and  that  the  practice  of  the  parallelism  soon  extended 
to  all  poetry.  But,  for  example,  proverbs  from  their 
very  epigrammatic  nature  tend  towards  parallelism.  The 
origin  was  most  likely  due  to  the  variations  of  phrase 
introduced  by  individuals  who  tired  of  the  incessant,  silly 
repetition  of  similar  words  such  as  are  indulged  in  by 
savages. 

There  is  parallelism  in  all  poetry,  in  Beowulf  and  the 
Kalevala,  and  even  in  prose.  For  it  must  be  admitted  that 
under  emotion  a  man  tends  to  repeat  an  idea,  in  the  same 
or  in  a  synonymous  language. 


104         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  parallelism  was  consciously 
and  deliberately  indulged  in  by  the  Hebrew  poets,  but  it 
is  as  absurd  to  confuse  it  with  Hebrew  poetry  as  to 
confuse  metre  with  English  poetry.  There  are  poetical 
passages  in  the  Bible  containing  no  parallelisms.  It 
should  also  be  borne  in  mind  that  parallelism  developed  as 
a  perfect  pattern  when  poetry  was  at  a  high  stage.  Like 
all  patterns  it  was  a  product  of  a  type  of  civilization. 
No  rude  state  of  society  can  develop  a  pattern,  which  is 
the  result  of  evolution. 

Parallelism  is  not  used  frequently  to-day  as  a  pattern 
of  verse,  though  it  can  be  found  in  all  modern  literature. 
Yet  it  is  a  more  natural  means  of  expressing  one's 
emotions  than  rhyme  or  metre. 

The  only  pattern  of  importance,  then,  that  appears 
extensively  in  the  Bible  is  that  of  parallelism.  There  is 
no  pattern  of  rhythm  at  all,  for  this  is  free.  The  result  is 
that  the  poetry  of  the  Bible  is  in  what  may  be  called 
prose,  for  the  repetition  of  the  idea  and  language  in  the 
parallelism  is  natural  even  in  prose.  Parallelism  in  the 
Bible  did  not  create  a  distinct  branch  of  literature  called 
verse,  as  metre  did.  Those  Psalms  that  have  parallelism 
are  very  little  different  from  those  Psalms  where  it  is 
absent.  They  are  both  really  prose. 

It  was  unfortunate  that  Hebrew  poetry  later  eschewed 
the  rhythmic  prose  used  in  the  Bible  and  adopted  first 
rhymed  prose  and  then  rhymed  metre.  There  were  sev- 
eral circumstances  that  led  to  this. 

It  has  been  usually  recognized  that  rhymed  prose  was 
first  used  among  the  Hebrews  in  the  Liturgy  by  Jannai, 
who  flourished  in  the  seventh  century.  Metre  was  intro- 
duced in  the  tenth  century  by  Dunash  ben  Labrat.  Both 
these  poets  followed  Arabic  models.  Saadyah,  the  He- 
brew philosopher,  blamed  Dunash  for  having  ruined  the 


PROSE  PRECEDES  VERSE  HISTORICALLY  105 

beauty  and  naturalness  of  the  Hebrew  language  for  poetry. 
Even  Jehudah  HaLevi,  the  great  national  poet  who  used 
Arabic  meters,  regretted,  in  his  philosophical  work, 
Hacuzari*  that  these  foreign  Arabian  influences  should 
prevail  among  the  Hebrew  poets. 

The  oldest  Arab  poetry  was  also  in  prose.  The 
earliest  pattern  for  poetry  among  the  Arabians  was  the 
Saj  (cooing),  or  rhymed  but  unmetrical  prose.  Gold- 
ziher  calls  the  Saj  the  oldest  form  of  poetic  speech ;  it  con- 
tinued to  exist  even  after  the  regular  metres  were  estab- 
lished, the  Koran,  for  instance,  being  in  Saj.  At  first  it 
was  unrhymed,  as  Goldziher  says;  the  earliest  Arabic 
poetry  was  in  unmetrical  prose. 

From  Saj  arose  Rajaz  (trembling),  which  is  partly 
metrical,  and  forms  the  transition  to  the  artificial  Arabic 
meters. 

The  earliest  surviving  Arabic  poetry,  the  seven  poems  of 
the  Muallaqat,  composed  before  Mohammed,  are  so  per- 
fect in  form  that  all  Arabic  scholars  assume  they  were  pro- 
duced after  a  long  period  extending  through  many  years 
of  poetic  practice.  They  were  not  rude  products,  but  had 
an  historical  background,  as  did  the  Iliad.  They  are 
written  in  perfected  and  complicated  metres,  but  the  Saj 
is  older  than  these. 

We  have  two  other  proofs  that  poetry  was  in  early 
times  written  in  rhythmical  prose,  or  at  least  in  a  rhythm 
that  makes  only  a  slight  approach  to  metre.  These  are 
to  be  found  in  two  of  the  oldest  Aryan  literary  monu- 
ments extant,  the  Rigveda  of  India  and  the  Avesta  of 
Iran. 

Two-fifths  of  the  hymns  of  the  Rigveda  are  composed 
in  a  metre  called  trishtubh,  the  most  frequent  measure  in 
the  Veda.  It  is  made  up  of  stanzas  of  four  lines,  each  of 

*  There  is  an  English  translation  of  this  work. 


106         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

eleven  syllables,  the  last  four  of  which  only  have  to  follow 
a  pattern,  this  consisting  of  two  iambuses  or  an  iambus  and 
a  spondee.  This  requirement  left  a  good  deal  of  liberty 
to  the  poet.  Here  is  an  example  of  it,  in  the  Hymn  to 
Dawn,  in  MacDonnels'  Sanskrit  Literature  (P.  83)  : 

Arise!  the  breath,  the  life  again  has  reached  us: 
Darkness  has  gone  away  and  light  is  coming. 
She  leaves  a  pathway  for  the  sun  to  travel : 
We  have  arrived  where  men  prolong  existence. 

Max  Miiller  in  his  translation  in  prose  has  adhered  in 
many  cases  to  the  original  metre,  and  the  reader  feels  he  is 
reading  prose.  The  Hindus,  like  the  free  verse  writers, 
merely  arranged  their  lines  to  call  attention  to  the  rhythm, 
but  it  was  really  prose  employing  metrical  rules  only  at 
the  end  of  the  line.  It  has  none  of  the  hampering  qualities 
of  classic  or  English  metres,  or  of  the  metres  in  the  later 
Indian  epics  when  the  quantity  of  every  syllable  was  de- 
termined. 

The  Rigvedas  are  fixed  by  some  scholars  at  1500  B.  C. 

When  we  come  to  the  Avesta  of  the  Iranians  who  left 
India  and  wrote  their  work  in  a  language  that  is  almost 
Sanskrit,  we  find  more  liberty  as  regards  the  metres. 
The  Gathas,  which  are  said  to  be  the  oldest  portions  of  the 
work,  the  work  of  Zoroaster  himself,  have  the  same  or 
nearly  the  same  kind  of  metre  as  the  Vedic  hymns,  but 
there  is  greater  liberty.  The  syllables  need  not  be  of  a 
uniform  quantity  at  the  end  of  the  line,  but  each  line,  as  in 
the  Rigvedas,  also  has  the  same  number  of  syllables.  The 
third  of  the  five  Gathas  uses  the  trishtubh  or  most  fre- 
quent metre  of  the  Veda,  four  lines  of  eleven  syllables, 
but  without  restrictions  as  to  quantity  of  final  vowels. 

Of  course  the  reader  can  see  that  such  verse  is  really 
prose,  for  there  are  no  limitations  as  to  when  accent  or 
quantity  should  uniformly  be  used.  L.  H.  Mills  in  his 


PROSE  PRECEDES  VERSE  HISTORICALLY   107 

translation  of  the  Gathas  keeps  close,  as  he  tells  us,  to  the 
original  metres.  He  wisely  breaks  up  the  metrical  line, 
based  merely  on  the  counting  of  syllables,  and  the  result 
reads  like  prose,  which  it  really  is  in  the  original. 

A  study  of  the  five  "metres"  of  the  five  Gathas  appears 
in  Martin  Haug's  Essays  in  the  Sacred  Language,  Writ- 
ings and  Religion  of  the  P arsis. 

The  Gathas  were  written  about  the  fourteenth  century 
B.  C.  by  Zoroaster  and  hence  are  not  much  later  than  the 
Rigvedas. 

In  the  Rigvedas  and  Gathas  we  have  the  first  stage  of 
metre  used  by  Aryan  nations;  these  are  the  basis  of  all 
later  metres.  They  were  written,  it  must  be  recalled,  not 
in  ages  of  barbarism,  and  represent  the  transition  from 
prose  to  regular  metre.  They  are  so  near  prose  that  only 
an  arrangement  into  lines  makes  us  call  them  metrical. 
After  all,  they  do  not  differ  much  from  the  rhythmical 
prose  in  which  the  poetry  of  Ancient  Egyptians,  Baby- 
lonians and  Hebrews  was  written.  We  see  thus  that 
rhythmical  prose  was  the  first  language  wherein  poetry 
was  written,  and  that  hampering  metre  is  always  late  in 
the  literary  development  of  a  nation.  We  learn  how  great 
is  the  delusion  of  literary  historians  that  metrical  poetry 
is  the  first  literature  of  all  nations  and  that  prose  is  a  later 
growth. 

The  earliest  poetry  of  a  country  is  expressed  first  in 
prose  by  word  of  mouth.  It  is  then  put  down  first  in 
writing  in  prose,  and  later  versions  sometimes  change  the 
prose  into  meter.  Often  the  earlier  prose  version  is  lost 
and  it  is  then  concluded  that  a  literature  of  a  nation  begins 
in  verse. 

Let  us  examine  the  form  of  the  earliest  Irish  literature. 
The  oldest  stories  in  Irish  literature  center  around  the  ex- 
ploits of  Cuchulinn,  who  is  reputed  to  have  died  at  the 


io8         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

beginning  of  the  Christian  era.  This  means  that  the  tale 
about  him  was  told  by  word  of  mouth  up  till  the  time  they 
were  written  down  in  the  seventh  or  eighth  century.  The 
versions  of  a  few  centuries  later  are  the  copies  we  now 
have  in  the  epic  Tain  Bo  Cualnge.  According  to  Edmund 
C.  Quiggin's  article  on  Irish  Literature  in  the  Brittanica, 
the  original  Tain  consisted  of  prose  interspersed  with 
rhythmical  prose  called  rhetoric.  Later  metrical  poems 
were  largely  substituted  for  the  rhetoric.  As  Mr.  Quiggin 
says,  the  Tain  is  of  interest  as  showing  the  preliminary 
stage  through  which  the  epics  of  all  other  nations  had 
gone.  No  doubt  even  the  Iliad  was  originally  told  in 
prose  (and  probably  written  in  prose)  while  the  verse  ver- 
sions are  the  latest  we  have  of  the  story. 

Eleanor  Hull,  in  A  Text  Book  of  Irish  Literature, 
also  says  in  Vol.  i,  p.  95,  that  there  are  few  verse  poems 
in  the  earlier  Tain  Bo  Cualnge,  most  of  the  poetry  being 
usually  in  declamatory  prose  style  known  as  rosg,  while  in 
the  later  version  long  verse  poems  are  frequent. 

The  earliest  Teutonic  verse  was  rather  rhythmical  prose, 
with  some  alliteration.  It  is  often  hard  to  distinguish 
Anglo-Saxon  prose  from  Anglo-Saxon  verse.  ^Elfric, 
who  is  regarded  by  many  as  one  of  the  fathers  of  English 
prose,  wrote  his  Lives  of  the  Saints  in  rhythmical  prose, 
arranged  in  irregular  lines  just  like  our  modern  free  verse. 
The  reader  may  consult  Professor  Skeat's  edition.  This 
arrangement,  needless  to  say,  did  not  make  poetry  of  it. 
But  free  verse,  as  we  see,  was  written  in  England  in  1000 
A.  D. 

Dr.  Edwin  Guest,  in  his  History  of  English  Rhythms, 
says  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  writers  sometimes  gave  a  very 
definite  rhythm  to  their  prose,  and  he  cites  a  few  passages 
characterizing  King  William,  from  the  Chronicle  at- 
tributed to  Wulfstan  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eleventh  cen- 


PROSE  PRECEDES  VERSE  HISTORICALLY  109 

tury.  Dr.  Guest  adds  that  in  his  opinion  this  rhythmical 
prose  was  one  of  the  instruments  in  breaking  up  the  alliter- 
ative system  of  the  Anglo-Saxons.  The  passage  he  cites, 
however,  is  no  more  rhythmical  than  many  passages  in 
modern  English  prose.  Anglo-Saxon  prose,  then,  often 
was  rhythmical,  and  even  arranged  like  free  verse,  but  it 
became  genuine  poetry  only  when  the  element  of  ecstasy 
was  present.  Even  the  middle-English  impassioned  allit- 
erative prose  poem,  The  Wooing  of  Our  Lord,  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  does  not  differ  much  from  Anglo- 
Saxon  verse. 

The  earliest  Teutonic  poetry  was  emotional  prose,  and 
only  later  did  definite  rules  bind  it.  The  author  of 
Beowulf,  though  the  first  English  verse  poet,  is  not  the 
oldest  Teutonic  poet;  he  had  predecessors  in  rhythmic 
prose.  "When  we  consider  primitive  Teutonic  verse 
closely,"  says  Gosse  in  his  article  in  the  Brittanica  on 
Verse,  "we  see  that  it  did  not  begin  with  any  conscious 
art,  but  as  Vigfussen  had  said,  'was  simply  excited  and 
emphatic  prose'  uttered  with  the  repetition  of  catch 
words  and  letters.  The  use  of  these  was  presently  regu- 
lated." English  poetry,  then,  began  in  the  use  of  excited 
and  emphatic  prose.  One  of  the  best  pieces  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  prose  poetry  is  the  Sermon  to  the  English  on 
the  ravages  of  the  Dane  by  Archbishop  Wulfstan  of 
York  in  the  early  part  of  the  eleventh  century.  It  reads 
like  Anglo-Saxon  verse.  One  sees  the  unconscious  in- 
fluence of  Anglo-Saxon  prose  poetry  as  late  as  Drum- 
mond's  The  Cypress  Grove  (1623),  an  ecstatic  prose  poem 
against  death. 

The  fact  that  the  Sagas,  the  earliest  literature  of  Ice- 
land, were  written  in  perfect  prose  has  puzzled  those  who 
claim  that  the  early  literature  of  all  nations  is  verse  poetry, 
and  that  prose  is  a  later  development.  The  events  which 


I  io         THE  LITERATURE1  OF  ECSTASY 

the  Sagas  celebrate  took  place  in  the  tenth  century,  and  the 
following  century  was  the  period  of  their  narration. 
They  were  written  down  in  the  present  form  chiefly  in  the 
thirteenth  century.  Ari  Frodi  (1067-1148)  is  considered 
by  many  the  first  inventor  of  classic  Norse  prose.  The 
most  famous  of  the  Greater  Sagas  is  the  Njala  written 
about  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  and  celebrating 
events  of  the  beginning  of  the  eleventh  century. 

Earlier  Icelandic  verse  poetry  did  exist,  but  it  does  not 
belong  to  Iceland  proper.  The  great  strength  of  real 
Iceland  poetry  was  in  the  Sagas,  which  Morris  calls  "un- 
versified  poetry."  Some  of  these  existed  as  early  as  the 
first  part  of  the  tenth  century.  It  seems  anomalous  to  the 
literary  historian  that  a  nation  should  at  the  very  beginning 
of  its  literary  history  have  developed  prose  before  verse, 
that  it  should  have  celebrated  its  heroes  in  prose  instead  of 
verse  song.  All  stories  among  ancient  people  were,  how- 
ever, originally  told  in  prose ;  the  first  expression  was  al- 
ways in  rhythmical  poetical  prose. 

It  is  not  true,  then,  that  verse  is  the  first  form  in  which 
a  nation's  poetry  is  written,  or  that  prose  developed  from 
verse.  Prose  was  the  original  language  of  poetry,  and  to 
prose  it  should  return.  The  pattern  was  a  gradual  de- 
velopment. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BLANK  VERSE  AND  FREE  VERSE  AS  FORMS  OF  PROSE 

THE  unrhymed  iambic  pentameter  known  as  blank 
verse  is  really  a  form  of  free  verse ;  it  is  a  modified  form 
of  the  unrhymed  classical  measure.  It  made  its  appear- 
ance in  Italy  in  the  early  part  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
was  used  by  Ariosto  in  his  comedies,  except  that  he  em- 
ployed a  final  additional  unaccented  syllable,  making 
eleven  syllables  in  each  line.  Surrey,  who  used  it  in  his 
translation  of  two  books  of  the  JEneid,  imported  it  from 
the  Italians.  It  was  called  by  the  Italians  versi  sciolti, 
"untied  or  free  verse."  It  was,  then,  the  old  classical 
measure  with  more  freedom. 

In  his  essay,  Blank  Verse,  John  Addington  Symonds 
dwells  especially  on  the  plasticity  and  variety  of  blank 
verse,  which  he  says  it  has  more  than  any  other  national 
metre.  It  may  be  used  for  the  commonplace  and  the 
sublime,  the  tragic  and  the  comic,  etc.  It  does  not  have 
to  consist  of  five  iambuses  only,  but  other  feet  may  be 
substituted  almost  at  the  caprice  of  the  poet.  This,  how- 
ever, practically  amounts  to  saying  that  blank  verse  is  after 
all  a  great  deal  like  prose ;  indeed,  it  may  be  arranged  like 
modern  free  verse  with  great  ease.  Its  plasticity  and 
variety  are  due  to  the  fact  that  its  artificial  requirements 
are  less  than  those  of  most  other  metres.  It  was  a  for- 
tunate day  for  English  drama  and  poetry  when  Marlowe, 
Shakespeare  and  Milton,  following  in  the  footsteps  of 
Surrey's  translation  of  two  books  of  the  BLneid,  and  Sack- 
in 


112         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

ville's  and  Norton's  play,  Gorboduc,  made  blank  verse 
fashionable.  The  writers  really  brought  poetry  back  into 
prose.  For  blank  verse  is  but  a  restricted  prose,  because 
there  is  as  often  as  not  no  natural  pause  at  the  end  of  the 
line,  and  because  other  feet  may  be  substituted  for  the 
iambus. 

One  of  the  reasons  why  English  verse  poetry  excels 
French  is  because  blank  verse,  a  more  natural  medium 
than  the  rhymed  Alexandrines,  became  the  chief  vehicle 
for  poetry. 

In  fact,  the  blank  verse  of  the  later  Elizabethan 
dramatists  is  really  prose,  for  it  is  less  rhythmical  than  that 
of  Shakespeare.  Blank  verse  was  said  to  have  degener- 
ated with  them.  It  is  also  said  to  be  prosaic  as  used  by 
Wordsworth.  These  poets,  however,  are  merely  less 
rhythmical  than  the  alleged  masters  of  blank  verse.  All 
blank  verse  is  as  near  prose  as  any  metrical  medium  that 
has  been  hitherto  introduced.  Bernard  Shaw  said  he 
found  it  easier  than  prose.  It  appears  very  often  in  prose 
without  the  writer  being  aware  of  it.  Dickens  had  a 
tendency,  as  also  did  Ruskin,  to  drop  unconsciously  into 
blank  verse  in  his  prose. 

The  great  English  blank  verse  poets  and  nearly  all  the 
poets  of  England  in  the  nineteenth  century  used  this 
medium,  and  are  really  our  supreme  prose  poets. 

The  experiment  of  arranging  blank  verse  in  the  form  of 
prose  and  of  putting  prose  in  the  metre  of  blank  verse  has 
been  often  tried  with  success.  I  have  no  intention  of  using 
this  means  of  showing  that  blank  verse  is  really  a  more 
modulated  prose.  Any  passage  of  blank  verse  can  nat- 
urally also  be  put  into  modern  free  verse,  into  the  free 
rhythms  of  Whitman,  for  example. 

The  lovers  of  blank  verse  imagine,  however,  that  its 
beauty  is  partly  derived  from  the  existence  of  a  pause  at 


BLANK  AND  FREE  VERSE  113 

the  end  of  the  fifth  foot  and  because  the  next  line  begins 
with  a  capital  letter.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  no  par- 
ticular virtue  in  having  that  pause,  and  the  next  line  need 
not  begin  with  a  capital  letter,  and  should  be  continued 
as  of  the  same  line.  For  the  real  pauses  are,  after  all,  not 
in  these  artificial  places  but  where  our  natural  speech  and 
punctuation  marks  dictate  them. 

The  virtues  of  blank  verse  are  the  virtues  of  rhythmic 
prose,  which  is  still  freer  and  more  natural  than  blank 
verse,  just  as  blank  verse  is  preferable  to  the  heroic 
couplet. 

Our  English  poets  who  write  in  blank  verse  would  have 
done  even  better  to  use  prose,  rhythmical  or  unrhythmical. 
To  us  moderns  there  is  something  of  a  distortion  in  chop- 
ping up  good  prose  into  lines  of  five  feet,  each  beginning 
with  a  capital  letter.  The  more  beautiful  and  natural 
medium  is  prose,  for  blank  verse  is  but  a  confined  prose. 
It  is  not  fair  or  right  to  make  characters  speak  in  this 
fettered  prose.  It  is  absurd  to  state  that  their  speeches 
become  poetry  only  because  of  this  fettered  prose.  Every 
great  passage  in  Shakespeare  in  blank  verse  would  have 
continued  to  be  poetry  in  regular  prose.  We  observe  that 
the  great  prose  passages  of  Shakespeare  are  poetry  even 
though  not  in  blank  verse.  English  poetry  should  free  it- 
self from  the  bondage  of  blank  verse,  and  use  prose. 
However,  next  to  free  verse  blank  verse  is  the  best 
medium  that  English  poetry  has  yet  found. 

Blank  verse  was  in  disfavor  in  the  eighteenth  century 
and  was  regarded  as  prose.  We  may  smile  at  Samuel 
Johnson's  remark  upon  it  in  his  Life  of  Roscommon,  but 
on  reflection  we  find  that  he  was,  after  all,  right. 
"Blank  verse,  left  merely  to  its  numbers,  has  little  opera- 
tion either  on  ear  or  mind;  it  can  hardly  support  itself 
without  bold  figures  and  striking  images.  A  poem  frig- 


114         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

idly  didactic,  without  rhyme,  is  so  near  prose  that  the 
reader  only  scorns  it  for  pretending  to  be  verse."  He 
argues,  either  write  prose  or  rhyme,  but  choose  no  inter- 
mediate measure. 

The  free  verse  of  modern  times,  the  revival  of  which  is 
due  to  Walt  Whitman,  is  really  the  oldest  form  in  which 
poetry  was  expressed.  It  existed  along  with  parallelism 
among  the  Egyptians,  Babylonians,  and  Hebrews,  among 
the  Hindoos  and  the  Anglo-Saxons.  It  is  rhythmical 
prose,  arranged  so  as  to  call  attention  to  the  rhythm. 
It  is  not  a  third  medium  for  expression,  next  to  prose 
and  the  regular  verse- forms.  The  lines  do  not  return  upon 
themselves,  that  is,  there  is  no  repeat  any  more  than  in 
rhythmical  prose. 

In  its  present  form  in  English  it  dates  from  Aelfric's 
Lives  of  the  Saints,  about  1000  A.D. 

Free  verse  has  come  to  stay,  and  numbers  many  able 
poets  among  its  devotees.  It  is  more  natural  than  rhymed 
or  metrical  verse,  which,  however,  it  will  not  wholly  dis- 
place. The  manuscripts  of  many  poets  who  used  conven- 
tional metres  show  that  the  original  form  of  composition 
was  free  verse.  The  detractors  of  free  verse  need  not 
think  they  bring  a  valid  argument  against  it  when  they  ar- 
range free  verse  in  prose  form,  and,  vice  versa,  chop  up 
prose  sentences  into  brief  lines  beginning  with  a  capital, 
and  ask  what  is  the  difference  between  the  two.  It  is  ad- 
mitted there  is  none.  It  matters  not  if  the  poet  wishes  to 
arrange  his  composition  in  free  verse  forms  to  call  atten- 
tion to  the  rhythm,  or  to  print  it  as  prose.  It  is  immaterial 
if  you  call  vers  libre  rhythmical  prose  or  a  distinct  verse 
form.  The  poetry  is  independent  of  any  ordering  of  the 
lines.  Neither  of  the  resulting  products  loses  or  gains  in 
poetical  attributes  by  the  objector's  turning  prose  into  free 
verse,  or  free  verse  into  prose.  The  question  is,  how  much 


BLANK  AND  FREE  VERSE  115 

ecstasy  or  emotion,  what  impassioned  ideas  there  are  in  the 
work. 

Free  verse  may  or  may  not  have  a  cadence  all  its  own, 
but  one  feels  that  those  who  advocate  free  verse  need  not 
try  to  prove  that  it  does  and  must  possess  a  cadence  pe- 
culiar to  itself.  Free  verse  may  have  great  poetic  value 
even  though  it  lacks  a  unique  cadence.  Free  verse  rose 
into  prominence  lately  because  poets  wanted  to  be  freed 
from  the  bonds  of  metre.  They  should  not  encumber 
themselves  with  the  shackles  of  a  new  prosody. 

Let  us  illustrate  our  point:  we  shall  take  a  few  lines 
from  a  great  prose  poem  by  Lafcadio  Hearn  and  arrange 
them  in  free  verse.  It  is  from  the  essay  called  "The 
Eternal  Haunter"  in  the  volume  Exotics  and  Retro- 
spectives. The  haunter  is  evidently  ancestral  memory  or 
the  spirit  of  life  in  the  past. 

Ancient  her  beauty 

As  the  heart  of  man, 

Yet  ever  waxing  fairer, 

Forever  remaining  young. 

Mortals  wither  in  time 

As  leaves  in  the  frost  of  autumn ; 

But  time  only  brightens  the  glow 

And  the  bloom  of  her  endless  youth. 

All  men  have  loved  her 

But  none  shall  touch  with  his  lips 

Even  the  hem  of  her  garment. 

It  is  seen  that  this  prose  passage  in  the  tree  verse 
transformance  has  the  cadences  which  were  present  before. 
It  is  still  poetical,  as  it  was  in  the  original  version  as  well. 
It  really  matters  little  if  Hearn  had  written  it  as  it  now 
stands.  It  is  a  question  of  personal  preference  with  the 
poet,  in  what  form  he  wishes  to  write. 


ii6         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Walter  P.  Eaton,  in  an  article  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
for  October,  1919,  considers  the  free  verse  form  different 
from  prose.  He  took  a  passage  from  Pater's  Renaissance 
and  arranged  it  in  free  verse  form,  and  then  a  passage  from 
Sandburg's  free  verse  and  arranged  it  in  prose,  and  tried 
unsuccessfully  to  show  that  the  Pater  passage  did  not  be- 
come free  verse,  and  that  the  Sandburg  passage  did  not 
become  good  prose.  His  mistake  was  in  trying  to  take 
a  passage  from  Sandburg  that  had  a  patterned  form,  and 
in  arranging  the  Pater  passage  into  lines  that  were  too 
brief.  But  Professor  Lowes  has  taken  passages  from 
Pater,  Hewlett,  Fiona  Macleod,  Conrad  and  George  Mere- 
dith and  printed  them  as  free  verse,  and  they  truly  read 
like  free  verse  poems. 

The  votaries  of  free  verse  demand  a  special  cadence, 
but  there  is  hardly  any  of  it  in  Masters's  poems  in  the 
Spoon  River  Anthology  which  could  have  been  printed  as 
prose  passages.  They  would  have  been  just  as  good  and 
poetical  as  they  are  in  free  verse,  but  Masters  has  the  right 
to  make  any  arrangement  he  wanted.  Ecstasy  is  more 
important  than  cadence,  and  he  has  ecstasy. 

The  following  passage  from  Roosevelt's  essay  on  History 
as  Literature  is  poetry  by  virtue  of  its  ecstasy  and  visual- 
izing effect,  though  printed  in  prose  form.  Roosevelt 
might  have  arranged  it  in  the  long  lines  of  irregular  lengths 
like  those  of  Whitman  into  which  it  fits  better  than  it 
would  into  lines  of  brief,  irregular  length.  But  its  poetry 
does  not  depend  upon  the  rhythms  which  are  in  the 
original  prose.  It  is  only  one  of  the  few  cases  where 
Roosevelt  succeeds  in  being  a  poet,  for  he  was  rather  the 
orator  who  swayed  by  rhetoric  many  of  the  worst  of 
popular  prejudices. 


BLANK  AND  FREE  VERSE  117 

The  true  historian  will  bring  the  past  before  our  eyes  as  if 

it  were  the  present  .  .  . 

Gorgeous  in  our  sight  will  rise  the  splendor  of  dead  cities, 
And  the  might  of  the  elder  empires  of  which  the  very  ruins 

crumbled  to  dust  ages  ago ; 
Along    ancient    trade-routes,    across    the    world's    waste 

spaces,  its  caravans  shall  move; 
And  the  admirals  of  uncharted  seas  shall  furrow  the  ocean 

with  their  lonely  prows, 
Beyond  the  dim  centuries  we  shall  see  the  banners  float 

above  armed  hosts. 
We  shall  see  conquerors  riding  forward  to  victories  that 

have  changed  the  course  of  time. 
We  shall  listen  to  prophecies  of  forgotten  seers. 
Ours   shall   be  the   dreams  of   dreamers   who   dreamed 

greatly, 

Who  saw  in  their  vision  peaks  so  lofty 
That  never  have  they  been  reached 
Ry  the  sons  and  daughters  of  men. 
Dead  poets  shall  sing  to  us  the  deeds  of  men  of  might 
And  the  love  and  the  beauty  of  women. 

Dr.  Andrews  in  his  Writing  and  Reading  of  Verse  has 
also  given  us  illustrations  of  rhythmic  prose  that  he  has 
resolved  into  free  verse.  Like  Professor  Patterson,  he 
rightly  refuses  to  recognize  free  verse  as  a  distinct  species 
of  verse,  holding  it  to  have  an  affinity  at  least  to  prose.* 
He  notes  that  the  free  verse  advocates  have  not  really 
defined  special  laws  of  free  verse.  He  also  recommends 
the  would-be  practitioners  of  free  verse  to  study  the  prose 
rhythms  of  men  like  Pater  and  De  Quincey. 

Professor  Corson,  the  Browning  scholar,  wrote  to  Walt 
Whitman  that  be  believed  that  impassioned  prose  would 
be  the  medium  in  which  the  poetry  of  the  future  would  be 
written,  and  that  he  considered  the  Leaves  of  Grass  one  of 

*  Spingarn's  Creative  Criticism  and  Erskine's  The  Kinds  of 
Poetry,  two  excellent  brochures  in  aesthetic  criticism,  take  a  sim- 
ilar view  point. 


ii8         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

the  harbingers.  The  vogue  of  free  verse,  which  is  but 
impassioned  prose,  shows  that  his  prophecy  is  coming  true. 
In  England  Matthew  Arnold  and  Walter  Henley  used 
it.  Edward  Carpenter  had  been  writing  it  as  a  result  of 
Whitman's  influence,  in  Towards  Democracy  in  1883. 
In  America  Horace  Traubel,  long  before  the  free  verse 
vogue  started,  had  been  writing  in  his  The  Conservator 
free  verse  poems.  No  one  paid  attention  to  these  even 
when  some  of  them  were  collected  in  Optimos  in  1910, 
except  a  few  disciples.  Richard  Hovey,  Ernest  Crosby, 
and  Stephen  Crane  had  also  been  writing  free  verse 
after  Whitman  before  the  year  1900.  About  1912  an 
impetus  was  given  to  free  verse  by  the  poets  of  the  new 
poetic  era  which  set  in  and  which  Untermeyer  calls  the 
New  Era  in  American  Poetry.  Most  of  the  contemporary 
free  verse  poets  began  writing  simultaneously. 

Nearly  all  of  our  modern  free  verse  poets  are  admittedly 
indebted  to  Whitman ;  Louis  Untermeyer  names  Whitman 
as  the  leading  influence  on  modern  American  poetry.  Let 
us  also  be  thankful  that  Whitman  did  not  write  about 
the  "technique  of  free  verse,"  about  "cadence,"  "strophe" 
and  "return." 

Whitman  is  without  a  doubt  the  father  of  free  verse  in 
America  and  England  to-day.  He  did  not  claim  to  have 
originated  it,  since  he  found  a  form  of  it  in  the  prose  poetry 
of  the  Bible  and  Ossian.  It  was  also  used  by  Milton  and 
Blake  and  in  German  by  Goethe  and  Heine.  As  Bliss 
Perry  also  shows,  The  Lily  and  the  Bee  by  Warren,  the 
author  of  Ten  Thousand  a  Year,  was  written  in  free  verse, 
before  Whitman.  Tupper  also  used  it.  Free  verse  was 
adopted  in  France  and  Belgium  as  a  result  of  Whitman's 
influence.  America  owes  nothing  to  French  free  verse 
which  was  usually  rhymed  and  corresponds  to  the 


BLANK  AND  FREE  VERSE  119 

Pindaric  Ode  founded  by  Cowley  in  the  middle  of 
the  seventeenth  century.* 

Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  was  one  of  the  few  ancient 
critics  who  brought  the  boundaries  of  prose  and  poetry 
close.  His  work  On  Literary  Composition  contains  two 
chapters  on  the  importance  of  rhythm,  which  he  considers 
an  important  element  in  prose  as  well  as  in  verse,  and  he  is 
especially  impressed  by  the  rhythms  of  Thucydides,  Plato 
and  Demosthenes.  At  the  conclusion  of  this  work,  which 
has  been  translated  by  W.  Rhys  Roberts,  are  two  chapters 
entitled  "How  Prose  Can  Resemble  Verse,"  and  "How 
Verse  Can  Resemble  Prose."  He  wants  prose  not  to  be 
cast  in  metre  or  rhythm  but  simply  to  appear  rhythmical 
and  metrical;  the  metres  and  rhythms  must  be  unob- 
strusively  introduced.  In  this  he  follows  Aristotle's 
Rhetoric  which  says  prose  should  have  rhythm  but  of  not 
too  marked  a  character.  Dionysius  especially  shows 
Demosthenes's  great  care  in  the  matter  of  rhythm,  and  in- 
stances as  examples  of  artistic  finish  among  the  Greeks 
the  fact  that  Isocrates  worked  ten  years  on  his  Panegyrics. 
After  having  shown  how  prose  may  resemble  verse  he 
points  out  how  verse  resembles  prose.  When  the  clauses 
and  sense  do  not  coincide  with  the  metrical  line  but  are 
carried  over  for  completion  in  another  line,  the  result  is 
prosaic.  That  is  what  makes  our  English  blank  verse 
so  much  like  prose. 

Dionysius  erred  however  in  not  emphasizing  the  im- 
portance of  the  ecstatic  element  in  making  prose  and  verse 
resemble  each  other.  He  over-valued  the  use  of  rhythm  in 
prose,  but  he  was  after  all  swayed  by  the  ecstasy  of  the 
writer.  He  tells  of  the  influence  upon  him  of  reading  one 

*  For  a  history  of  French  free  verse  see  Mcrcure  De  France, 
March  15,  1921.  Premiers  Poetes  Du  Vers  Libre  by  fidouard 
Dujardin. 


120         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

of  Demosthenes's  speeches.  If  Sidney  said  that  he  could 
not  take  up  the  ballad  of  Percy  and  Douglas  without  feel- 
ing his  heart  moved  as  by  a  trumpet,  Dionysius  says  even 
more  beautifully,  "When  I  take  up  one  of  his  speeches, 
I  am  entranced  and  am  carried  hither  and  thither,  stirred 
now  by  one  emotion,  now  by  another.  I  feel  distrust, 
anxiety,  fear,  disdain,  hatred,  pity,  good-will,  anger, 
jealousy.  I  am  agitated  by  every  passion  in  turn  that 
can  sway  the  human  heart,  and  am  like  those  who  are 
being  initiated  into  wild  mystic  rites." 

However,  regularity  of  feet  or  metre  in  prose  carried  on 
to  a  great  extent  makes  the  prose  artificial.  The  Romans 
occasionally  indulged  in  it,  but  they  generally  used  rhyth- 
mical prose,  as  the  reader  of  Cicero  and  Livy  will  observe. 
Quintilian,  who  recognized  that  prose  has  often  metrical 
feet  that  read  like  verse,  thought  it  ugly  and  inelegant 
that  an  entire  verse  should  appear  in  a  prose  composition. 
He  says  that  he  does  not  entertain  "the  idea  that  prose, 
which  ought  to  have  sweeping  and  fluent  motion,  should 
dawdle  itself  into  dotage  in  measuring  feet  and  weighing 
syllables.  For  this  would  be  the  part  of  a  wretched  crea- 
ture, occupied  on  the  infinitely  little.  Nor  could  one  who 
exhausted  himself  in  this  care,  have  time  for  better  things. 

Probably  we  need  not  better  reply  than  this  to  the  high 
claims  made  for  the  French  form  known  as  polyphonic 
verse.  Prose  that  is  interspersed  with  metrical  patterns  is 
not  natural. 

The  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  all  the  metrical  features 
that  are  demanded  of  poetry  belong  to  the  ornamental  re- 
quirements like  metaphors,  myths,  rhetorical  flourishes  and 
all  other  gewgaws.  There  are  always  stages  in  civiliza- 
tion when  man  wants  adornment  for  his  speech.  Some- 
thing of  that  mental  state  exists  in  us  to-day.  We  bedeck 
and  bedrape  our  poetry  with  trappings  without  which  it  is 


BLANK  AND  FREE  VERSE  121 

better  off.  Artificialities  appear  even  in  comparatively 
modern  prose.  The  prose  of  Milton  is  full  of  rhetoric  and 
the  great  Burke  had  rhetorical  characteristics  that  we  call 
Asiatic.  We  are  familiar  with  the  euphuistic  qualities  of 
the  Elizabethan  prose,  especially  pervading  John  Lyly's 
novel  Euphues  and  Sidney's  Arcadia. 

In  an  excellent  essay  Plutarch  shows  that  he  understood 
that  verse  was  largely  natural  to  man  in  a  certain  stage  of 
civilization,  because  all  ornament  was  natural  to  him.  In 
his  essay  on  "Wherefore  the  Pythian  Priestess  now  Ceases 
to  Delivei  Her  Oracle  in  Verse,"  he  gives  the  love  of  orna- 
ment as  the  real  reason  for  the  growth  of  metre  as  a  form 
of  literary  expression. 

Often  the  topic  is  broached  whether  men  like  Hardy 
and  Meredith  are  greater  as  poets  than  as  novelists.  The 
question  is  not  put  properly.  It  should  be,  Do  these  writers 
cease  being  poets  when  they  use  the  fetters  of  rhyme  and 
metre,  or  are  they  with  those  fetters  greater  poets  than 
they  were  in  their  novels.  I  have  no  intention  of  trying  to 
answer  these  questions,  though  it  is  usually  agreed  that 
these  writers  are  greater  in  their  novels  than  in  their  verse, 
but  the  point  is  that  they  are  poets  whether  they  use  prose 
or  verse  as  their  medium. 

Some  authors  get  more  ecstasy  into  their  work  when 
they  write  in  prose  than  in  verse,  as  readers  of  the  novels 
and  verse  poems  of  Dickens,  George  Eliot  and  Thackeray 
are  aware.  Other  authors  are  successful  in  crystallizing 
their  ecstasy  whether  they  write  in  prose  or  verse.  Gold- 
smith, Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Shelley,  Scott,  Emerson, 
Poe,  James  Thomson,  B.  V.,  Hardy,  Meredith,  Symons, 
Hugo,  De  Musset,  Goethe  and  Heine,  are  examples  of 
masters  of  the  literature  of  ecstasy  in  both  prose  and 
verse.  Other  verse  poets  have  not  at  all  succeeded  nor 
tried  to  succeed  in  writing  ecstasy  in  ordinary  prose. 


122         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

The  authors  who  have  given  us  ecstasy  only  in  prose 
but  have  not  tried  to  do  so  at  all  in  verse  are  too 
numerous  to  mention. v 

I  believe  that  poetry  will  again  return  to  the  natural 
language  of  prose.  Critics  are  taking  an  entirely  different 
stand  toward  rhythm,  admitting  that  the  poets  have  the 
right  to  vary  their  measures,  create  new  rhythm  and  not 
be  held  in  bondage  to  old  verse  forms.  The  day  is  dis- 
appearing when  a  man  like  Hegel  could  say  that  a  pro- 
duction not  in  metre  is  not  poetry.  A  sane  attitude  to- 
wards the  free  use  of  rhythms  by  poets  has  been  given  us 
in  a  New  Study  of  English  Poetry  by  Henry  Newboldt. 
Liberal  critics  are  helping  the  poets  break  their  shackles; 
the  following  passage  from  a  review  of  Newbolt's  book, 
by  J.  Middleton  Murry  is  worth  quoting: 

Great  Poets  have  always  been  those  who  believed  that 
poetry  was  by  nature  the  worthiest  vessel  of  the  highest 
arguments  of  which  the  soul  of  man  is  capable.  Yet  a 
poetic  theory  such  as  this  seems  bound  to  include  great 
prose,  and  not  merely  the  prose  which  can  most  easily  be 
assimilated  to  the  conditions  of  poetry,  such  as  Plato's 
Republic,  or  Milton's  Areopagitica,  but  the  prose  of  the 
great  novelists.  Surely  the  colloquial  prose  of  Tchekov's 
Cherry  Orchard  has  as  good  claim  to  be  called  poetry  as 
The  Essay  on  Man,  Tess  of  the  D'Urbervillcs  as  The  Ring 
and  the  Book,  The  Possessed  as  Phedre.  Where  are  we 
to  call  a  halt  in  the  inevitable  progress  by  which  the  kinds 
of  literary  art  merge  into  one?  If  we  insist  that  rhythm 
is  essential  to  poetry,  we  are  in  danger  of  confusing  the 
accident  with  the  essence,  and  of  fastening  upon  what  will 
have  to  be  in  the  last  analysis  a  merely  formal  difference. 
The  difference  in  such  must  be  substantial  and  essential 
aspects  of  Literature* 

*  Passages  of  a  similar  import  will  be  found  by  Professor 
George  M.  Harper  in  the  preface  to  his  John  Morley  and  Other 
Essays,  in  Richard  Aldington's  "The  Art  of  Poetry,"  The  Dial, 
August,  1920,  and  the  preface  to  F.  S.  Flint's  Otherworld. 


CHAPTER  VII 

MORAL  AND  PHILOSOPHICAL  IDEAS  AS  POETRY  WHEN 
WRITTEN   WITH   ECSTASY 

OUR  views  of  poetry,  or  the  literature  of  ecstasy,  il- 
luminate many  dark  crannies  in  one  of  the  most  un- 
fathomable caverns  of  aesthetic  speculation;  speculation 
of  the  connection  between  poetry  and  morals,  form  and 
matter,  art  for  art's  sake  and  didacticism.  It  has  been 
often  asked  whether  poetry  should  deal  with  moral  sub- 
jects, sociological  questions,  and  philosophical  ideas. 
The  question  disappears*  when  we  regard  literature  of 
ecstasy  in  prose  as  poetry,  for  all  ideas  are  dealt  with  in 
prose  and  some  may  be  ecstatically  treated.  If  poetry  is 
an  atmosphere  that  suffuses  literature,  it  may  bathe  most 
various  ideas.  Emotional  treatment  of  the  ideas  gives 
us  literature  of  ecstasy  or  poetry.  If  the  natural  lan- 
guage of  ecstasy  is  prose,  we  certainly  do  not  wish  to  see 
a  train  of  philosophical,  moral  or  sociological  views 
treated  in  verse.  To  this  extent  the  old  critic  was  right 
who  did  not  want  poetry  (a  long  composition  in  verse,  as 
he  understood  it)  to  deal  with  ethics  or  science. 

The  question  is  then  not  really  whether  poetry  should 
be  concerned  with  moral,  sociological  or  psychological 
themes,  for  these  themes  always  have  poetry  in  them,  and 
an  emotional  treatment  of  them  brings  the  poetry  into 
prominence.  Ideas  are  the  substance  of  poetry  and  nearly 
all  ideas  are  moral,  sociological  or  psychological.  Even 
scientific  facts  and  metaphysical  utterances  may  be  so 
stated  by  a  writer  as  to  show  the  latent  poetry.  The  two 

123 


124         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

famous  passages  in  Leaves  of  Grass  beginning  "I  open 
my  scuttle  at  night"  and  "I  am  an  acme  of  things  accom- 
plished and  an  encloser  of  things  to  be"  are  emotional 
statements  of  the  facts  of  the  infinity  of  the  universe 
and  of  the  evolution  of  man,  respectively;  Whitman 
brought  out  the  poetry  in  a  philosophical  and  in  a  scien- 
tific idea. 

'Moral  views  may  be  imaginatively  treated  and  be 
poetry.  The  theme  of  Great  Expectations  is  a  sermon 
against  pride  and  snobbery,  and  the  emotional  treatment, 
especially  by  force  of  example,  makes  part  of  the  book 
poetry.  Portrayals  of  hypocrites,  for  instance,  so  truth- 
fully and  movingly  artistic  as  to  arouse  an  ecstatic  state 
in  the  reader,  become  poetry.  Hence  Tartuffe  and  Peck- 
sniff are  poetical  portraits,  even  when  drawn  in  prose. 

Poetry  was  supposed  to  appeal  to  the  imagination,  prose 
to  the  intellect;  poetry  was  presumed  to  be  dictated  by 
the  heart,  prose  by  the  mind ;  fancy  was  thought  to  hold 
sway  in  poetry,  logic  in  prose.  But  nevertheless,  the  great 
English  poets  like  Shakespeare,  Browning,  Shelley, 
Wordsworth,  Whitman,  gave  us  much  poetry  that  was 
produced  by  the  intellect,  weighed  by  the  mind,  and  gov- 
erned by  logic.  Any  intellectual  and  even  moral  per; 
formance  may  be  elevated  into  poetry,  when  emotionally 
and  ecstatically  presented.  And  philosophers  like  Plato, 
Pascal,  Schopenhauer  and  Nietzsche  have  demonstrated 
this. 

Our  definition  of  poetry  throws  much  light  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  relations  of  politics  and  morals,  of  social  and 
philosophical  problems  to  poetry.  Poets  should  instruct, 
while  delighting,  is  the  contention  of  one  group.  They 
ought  merely  to  express  beauty  and  emotions,  is  the  em- 
phatic demand  of  another  class.  I  doubt  if  there  has  ever 
been  a  great  poet  who  hasn't  done  both  of  these  things. 


MORAL  AND   PHILOSOPHICAL   IDEAS  125 

If  a  poet  is  to  teach  he  must  teach  something ;  he  must  ex- 
press ideas,  and  ideas  mean  thoughts  about  life,  and  these 
in  turn  refer  to  the  relations  of  man  to  himself,  to  one 
another,  to  the  opposite  sex,  to  society,  to  the  universe, 
to  nature.  But  it  is  while  doing  this  that  he  must  give  us 
beauty  and  emotion. 

When  a  prose  writer  is  purely  didactic  without  any 
emotional  or  aesthetic  appeal  he  is  no  poet.  It  is  mani- 
festly absurd  also  for  an  author  to  give  in  metre  didactic 
works  which  could  be  better  written  in  prose.  To  this  ex- 
tent the  disciples  of  art  for  art's  sake  are  right,  that  the 
poet  should  not  give  us  unecstatic  political,  philosophical 
or  moral  lessons  in  metre.  If,  as  I  believe,  our  emotions 
may  be  expressed  in  prose  or  free  verse  probably  more 
poetically  than  even  in  metre,  it  is  surely  inadvisable  to 
drive  home  a  prosaic  idea  in  verse,  and  especially  at  great 
length.  Yet  this  has  often  been  done.  Browning  gave  us 
an  effective  harangue  against  spiritualism  in  Mr.  Sludge, 
"The  Medium,"  in  blank  j  verse,  Byron  proved  a  good 
critic  of  society  in  Don  Juan,  in  Ottava  Rima  metre, 
Shelley  preached  moral  reforms  in  the  Revolt  of  Islam, 
in  the  Spenserian  stanza.  Two  of  the  best  poems  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  among  the  masterpieces  of  their 
authors,  are  Swinburne's  Hertha,  and  Browning's  Rabbi 
Ben  Ezra,  and  they  are  both  ecstatically  didactic. 

But  the  future  poets  will  not  spin  out  their  ideas  in 
metre  at  great  length.  The  short  verse  poem  embodying 
an  idea  will  always  be  with  us,  but  I  doubt  if  we  will 
have,  or  at  least  ought  to  have,  philosophical  or  moral 
works,  extending  into  hundreds  or  thousands  of  lines  of 
regular  verse. 

John  Addington  Symdnds  has  in  his  Essays  Specula- 
tive and  Suggestive  taken  two  of  the  most  famous  dicta 
in  English  literature  regarding  the  function  of  poetry  in 


126         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

relation  to  form  and  matter,  and  given  us  a  sane  view- 
point. He  analyzes  Arnold's  statement  that  poetry  is  a 
criticism  of  life,  and  Pater's  assumption  that  all  art,  in- 
cluding poetry,  aspires  towards  the  condition  of  music 
which  thus  in  his  opinion  becomes  the  true  type  or  meas- 
ure of  consummate  art.  Symonds  shuns  both  the  didac- 
ticism which  Arnold's  view  encourages,  and  the  worship 
of  form  implied  in  Pater's  statement;  though  it  should 
be  said  that  Pater  in  his  essay  on  "Style"  urges  that,  after 
all,  subject  matter  is  the  deciding  factor  in  determining 
great  art.  As  Symonds  says,  the  poet  gives  us  rather  a 
revelation  than  a  criticism  of  life,  a  presentment  accord- 
ing to  his  faculty  for  observing  and  displaying  it;  he  is 
more  a  reporter  and  a  seer  than  a  judge.  Poets  take  their 
final  rank  by  matter  and  not  by  form.  Though  Sy- 
monds mentions  slurringly  a  great  poet  like  Baudelaire, 
still  the  following  lines  should  be  carefully  pondered  by 
many  of  our  versifiers :  "The  carving  of  cherry-stones' 
in  verse,  the  turning  of  triolets  and  rondeaux,  the  seeking 
after  sound  and  color  without  heed  for  sense,  is  all  fore- 
doomed to  final  failure."  Poetry  appeals  to  the  imagina- 
tive reason,  and  must  embody  thought  and  emotion.  As" 
Symonds  remarks,  Pater's  discrimination  between  these 
two  is  fanciful. 

Poetry  then  must  not  be  timid  about  dealing  with  ideas 
in  an  emotional  or  imaginative  manner.  It  may  even  take 
up  moral  problems  provided  it  does  not  sink  into  the 
commonplace  ethical  purposes  that  we  have  in  the  Psalm 
of  Life  and  Excelsior,  two  of  Longfellow's  most  inferior 
and  popular  poems.  An  idea  that  is  the  result  of  reason 
may  be  uttered  with  ecstasy,  and  hence  there  may  be  logic 
in  poetry. 

In  his  Oxford  Lectures  on  Poetry  in  the  essay  on 
"Poetry  for  Poetry's  Sake,"  Professor  A.  C.  Bradley 


MORAL  AND   PHILOSOPHICAL   IDEAS'  127 

takes  issue  with  those  who  claim  that  it  is  no  consequence 
what  a  poet  says  but  how  he  says  it,  and  he  rightly  re- 
gards as  of  small  aesthetic  value  that  formalist  heresy 
which  encourages  men  to  taste  poetry  as  though  it  were 
wine.  Poetry  inheres  in  ideas.  To  insist,  as  the  poetry 
for  poetry's  sake  school  does,  that  a  poem  has  no  more 
lesson  for  us  than  a  tree  is  to  institute  a  false  comparison, 
for  the  tree  has  a  lesson  for  any  one  who  finds  it. 

When  one  finishes  a  volume  of  poetry  by  some  of  the 
purely  aesthetic  poets,  one  is  amazed  at  the  kind  of  life 
they  embody  in  art.  It  is  often  such  a  petty  life,  a  talk 
to  a  cat,  or  an  imitation  of  an  image  of  an  old  poet,  or 
a  superabundant  reference  to  flowers.  It  is  not  of  the 
substance  of  which  noble  lives  are  made.  We  are  pained 
to  find  that  trite  utterances  or  references  are  tricked  out 
in  gaudy  images  and  given  forth  to  the  world  in  large 
quantities. 

Verses  of  trivial  facts  and  ideas  set  forth  with  artifice 
are  not  poetry.  Indeed,  it  is  a  petty  employment  for  poets 
to  be  giving  vent  to  labored  conceits  about  gold  fish,  and 
vases,  about  dandelions  and  kittens  and  lollypops,  invest- 
ing none  of  these  themes  with  imagination  or  intellect. 
Man  is  stirred  by  thousands  of  emotions  arising  from  his 
inability  to  adjust  himself  to  surroundings,  by  his 
thwarted  will  and  suppressed  desires.  He  is  often 
wrapped  in  gloom  for  want  of  real  truthful  consoling 
poetry.  He  experiences  tragedies  due  to  conflicts  with 
relatives,  friends,  to  lack  of  harmony  in  matrimonial  or 
amorous  affairs.  His  life  is  often  being  gradually  snuffed 
out  by  the  prevailing  of  stupid  and  deplorable  customs ;  he 
is  often  starving  or  being  insufficiently  fed,  and  frequently 
sees  his  children  in  unhappy  circumstances.  He  is  the 
victim  of  tyrants  and  unjust  social  systems,  and  is  en- 
gaged in  soul-killing  occupations.  He  faces  the  great 


128         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

mysteries  of  existence,  the  riddle  of  the  Sphinx.  He  wit- 
nesses cruelties  of  all  kinds,  persecution  of  races  and 
individuals,  mismanagement  of  affairs,  lynchings,  mas- 
sacres, wars  and  imprisonments.  Hypocrisy  and  vindic- 
tiveness  are  rife  and  man  suffers  thereby.  He  thirsts  for 
beauty,  he  pants  for  happiness. 

Yet  poets  who  may  find  numerous  and  important  sub- 
jects for  the  literature  of  ecstasy,  are  busy  writing 
sugared  verses  about  mosaics,  candles,  and  puppies,  and 
arranging  vowel  sounds  and  rhythms.  Men's  souls  are 
starving  to  be  fed  with  poetry  and  the  versifiers  polish 
and  file  and  chisel  verses  on  themes  that  interest  no  one. 
As  Horace  says,  the  mountains  are  in  labor  and  the  is- 
sue is  but  a  ridiculous  mouse. 

Indeed  it  is  not  the  subject  the  poet  chooses  that  one 
objects  to,  but  to  the  absence  of  ideas,  or  the  shallow- 
ness  or  triviality  of  the  idea.  Burns  took  a  daisy  and 
made  it  the  symbol  of  the  racked  poet,  and  could  write 
about  a  mouse  or  a  louse  and  deduce  some  universal 
idea.  Shelley  and  Keats  could  endure  emotions  and 
thoughts  by  singing  of  a  skylark  or  a  nightingale.  But 
the  petty  poet  cannot  deduce  anything  but  a  trifling 
idea,  no  matter  what  theme  he  selects. 

Another  feature  which  distinguishes  the  minor  poet 
in  prose  or  verse  is  his  investing  a  trite  idea  with  an 
emotion  out  of  all  proportion.  He  hales  with  enthusiasm 
a  commonplace,  he  gets  into  ecstasy  about  that  toward 
which  an  intelligent  man  displays  little  or  no  emotion. 
It  is  the  distinction  of  the  unknown  author  of  the  an- 
cient Greek  fragment  On  the  Sublime  that  he  deprecates 
the  tendency  to  wax  emotional  about  the  unemotional. 
The  silly  ideas  and  emotions  about  which  versifiers  get 
excited  are  often  an  index  to  their  own  moral  and  in- 
tellectual failing,  as  well  as  their  aesthetic  deficiency. 


MORAL  AND   PHILOSOPHICAL   IDEAS  129 

From  Sainte-Beuve  Matthew  Arnold  appropriately 
quotes  a  saying  to  the  effect  that,  in  judging  a  work,  the 
French  question  not  only  whether  they  are  moved  by  it, 
but  whether  also  they  have  the  right  to  be  moved  by  it. 

So  when  we  look  through  much  of  the  so-called  popu- 
lar poetry,  we  see  why  we  cannot  often  admit  it  to  the 
high  realm  of  the  literature  of  ecstasy.  It  contains  the 
childish  sentimental  excitement  about  facts  that  every 
thinking  man  takes  for  granted.  When  we  read  the 
eloquent  sermon  on  the  advantage  of  practicing  justice, 
we  wonder  at  the  folly  of  making  a  comment  about  so 
obvious  a  truism.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  moral 
axioms  lack  the  elements  of  poetry,  because  they  do  not 
admit  of  exposition  with  appreciable  ecstasy.  Verse 
is  full  of  stale  themes  sung  over  so  often  that  we  al- 
most rebel  when  the  new  poet  comes  along  and  sings 
over  the  same  old  story. 

It  requires  a  great  intellect  to  know  when  to  judge 
rightly  about  the  propriety  of  one's  emotions  for  the 
subject  of  literature.  We  do  not  think  that  it  is  the  sub- 
ject matter  of  emotion  to  go  into  ecstatic  praises,  for 
example,  over  a  man  who  supports  his  child.  We  find 
that  animals  provide  food  for  their  young;  hence  it  is 
not  fit  to  grow  eloquent  because  a  man  does  what  even 
the  lowest  animal  has  the  instinct  to  do. 

Conventional  morality  only  becomes  poetry  when  col- 
ored by  the  imagination  or  illustrated  by  an  unusually 
pleasing  ecstatic  presentment.  When  Fuller,  for  instance, 
says  that  we  should  not  mock  at  the  defects  of  people 
who  are  physically  or  mentally  disabled,  he  utters  a  stale 
truism  that  is  not  poetry  but  ethics.  When  he  adds 
that  it  is  pitiable  to  beat  a  cripple  with  his  own  crutches, 
the  little  prose  passage  is  lifted  up  into  poetry,  for  we 
are  brought  into  a  state  of  ecstasy  by  the  imaginative 


130        THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

illustration.  Similarly  take  some  of  the  instances  of  self- 
sacrifice  by  the  common  people  which  Bret  Harte  and 
O.  Henry  delighted  in  depicting.  Some  of  their  stories 
become  poetry  by  emotional  presentation  of  a  trite  idea. 

There  must  also  be  more  or  less  sympathy  with  the 
poet's  viewpoint.  "All  right  human  song,"  says  Ruskin  in 
his  Lectures  on  Art,  "is  the  finished  expression  by  art, 
of  the  joy  or  grief  of  noble  persons,  for  right  causes. 
And  accurately  in  proportion  to  the  Tightness  of  the  cause, 
and  purity  of  the  emotion,  is  the  possibility  of  the  fine 
art.  A  maiden  may  sing  of  her  lost  love,  but  a  miser 
cannot  sing  of  his  lost  money." 

Ruskin  may  have  corrupted  our  artistic  outlook  some- 
what by  insisting  on  an  ethical  aim.  Yet  we  should  re- 
member that  our  aesthetic  feelings  are  influenced  by  our 
moral  outlook.  While  we  should  not  seek  an  ethical 
aim  in  literature  as  an  end  in  itself,  while  we  should 
shun  the  preacher  of  -commonplaces  who  poses  as  a  poet, 
we  cannot  respond  to  the  sympathetic  depicting  of  an 
emotion  which  we  ourselves  could  never  feel  because  of 
repugnance  to  it. 

To  appreciate  a  poem  truly,  we  must  feel  as  the  poet 
does  and  sympathize  with  the  motives  that  inspired  his 
feelings.  The  reasons  that  urge  him  to  express  his  emo- 
tions must  appear  to  us  just  ones.  If  our  intellect  is 
far  greater  than  that  of  the  poet,  we  shall  find  that  many 
of  the  causes  that  inspire  him  to  sing  as  he  does  would 
not  at  all  arouse  in  us  the  emotions  experienced  by  him; 
his  poem  is  not  the  greatest  art  to  us.  If  his  intellect  is 
superior  to  ours,  we  shall  not  like  his  work;  but  then 
it  will  be  because  he  is  more  advanced  that  we  are. 

If  a  poet  were  to  sing  of  an  incestuous  love ;  or  de- 
cry sympathy  for  the  distressed;  or  to  laud  a  cruel  ac- 
tion; or  to  gloat  over  the  schemes  of  the  fraudulent;  or 


MORAL  AND   PHILOSOPHICAL   IDEAS  131 

sing  favorably  of  any  action  which  we  think  a  base  one, 
his  poem  would  not  be  art  for  it  does  not  evoke  emo- 
tional response  from  anybody. 

Poe  laid  down  the  principle  of  art  for  art's  sake  that 
poetry  deals  with  beauty  alone  and  that  the  only  faculty 
for  appreciating  it  is  that  of  taste.  He  held  that  poetry 
had  nothing  to  do  with  truth  or  duty;  that  the  intellect 
and  the  moral  sense  were  concerned  with  these  and 
hence  had  no  field  for  exercising  themselves  either  in 
writing  or  judging  poetry. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  all  three  faculties,  taste,  intellect 
and  moral  sense,  are  called  into  use  in  creating  and  ap- 
preciating the  highest  kind  of  poetry  or  any  other  form 
of  literature.  There  is  no  reason  why  a  poet  should  not 
make  use  of  all  three  faculties  if  he  has  them  all  de- 
veloped. Goethe  and  Ibsen  possessed  them.  The  high- 
est form  of  taste  can  scarcely  be  attained  unless  the  poet's 
intellect  and  moral  sense  are  fine.  For  falsehood  and  sin 
are  repugnant  to  our  taste  for  beauty.  A  book  that  is 
absolutely  tainted  with  moral  perversities  or  shows  a  fool- 
ish and  inconceivable  conception  of  intellectual  values 
will  be  certainly  deficient  in  some  phases  of  beauty.  Our 
consciences  and  our  minds  are  unconsciously  consulted 
in  our  conception  of  the  beautiful.  Not  only  truth,  but 
duty  is  beauty.  Even  Poe  maintained  that  Taste  held 
intimate  relations  with  Intellect  and  Truth  and  he  there- 
fore placed  it  between  them. 

The  greatest  classics  are  those  that  appeal  to  all  three 
faculties  in  us  and  those  works  which  offend  both  our  in- 
tellect and  moral  sense  do  not  completely  satisfy  our 
sense  of  beauty.  The  best  critics  from  Hazlitt  to  Brandes 
understood  that.  Fortunately  many  of  the  classics  have 
lost  only  in  parts  their  moral  and  intellectual  value,  and 
hence  still  hold  sway  over  us.  And  sometimes  the  beauty 


132         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

is  so  intensely  striking  that  we  charitably  overlook  faults 
of  morality  and  intellect. 

As  Professor  Woodberry  says  in  his  A  New  Defense 
of  Poetry  in  The  Heart  of  Man:  "Can  there  by  any  sur- 
prise when  I  say  that  the  method  of  idealism  is  that  of 
all  thought  ?  that  in  its  intellectual  process  the  art  of  the 
poet,  so  far  from  being  a  sort  of  incantation,  is  the  same 
as  belongs  to  the  logician,  the  chemist,  the  statesman  ?  It 
is  no  more  than  to  say  that  in  creating  literature  the  mind 
acts;  the  action  of  the  mind  is  thought;  and  there  are 
no  more  two  ways  of  thinking  than  there  are  two  kinds 
of  gravitation." 

The  connection  between  art  and  ethics  is  closer  than 
some  critics  imagine.  Spingarn  was  mistaken  when  he 
said  that  we  have  done  with  all  moral  judgment  of  litera- 
ture. A  book  is  often  artistically  great  chiefly  because 
its  ethical  viewpoint  is  right.  The  Tightness  of  it  is 
often  what  creates  the  ecstasy.  Let  us  take  Ibsen's 
Ghosts.  The  real  greatness  of  this  play  is  not  chiefly 
in  its  picture  of  heredity  or  of  a  man  becoming  an  idiot. 
Its  real  value  lies  in  its  attitude  towards  the  marriage 
problem  and  its- contrast  of  the  two  characters,  Mrs. 
Alving,  the  representative  of  the  new  order,  and  of 
Pastor  Manders,  representing  society.  The  leading  ques- 
tion there  is,  should  Mrs.  Alving  have  gone  back  to 
her  husband,  knowing  that  he  was  possessed  of  a 
loathsome  disease  which  might  be  inherited  by  any 
possible  progeny?  Was  she  justified  in  leaving  him? 
That  these  are  the  important  questions  is  evident  from 
the  motive  which  prompted  Ibsen  to  write  the  play, 
namely,  to  answer  the  critics  of  the  Doll's  House. 
The  conclusion  reached  by  Ibsen  from  the  terrible  pic- 
ture is  that  Mrs.  Alving  was  wrong  in  going  back  to  her 
husband,  that  there  are  times  when  it  is  justifiable  to 


MORAL  AND  PHILOSOPHICAL  IDEAS  133 

leave  one's  husband.  This  is  the  moral  lesson  of  the 
play,  and  is  conveyed  with  great  ecstasy;  in  fact,  the 
moral  intensifies  the  ecstasy.  A  conventional  playwright 
would  have  concluded  that  Mrs.  Alving  should  have  re- 
mained with  her  husband  in  obedience  to  duty,  that  the 
simple-minded  Pastor  was  in  the  right.  The  play  even 
if  handled  as  well  as  by  Ibsen  could  not  have  been  the 
great  work  of  literature  that  it  is,  if  written  in  defense 
of  the  conventional  moral  code.  A  great  author  attacks 
conventional  morality  to  battle  for  a  higher  morality. 

The  moral  ideas  of  an  author  have  much  to  do  with 
the  literary  excellence  of  his  work.*  But  this  does  not 
mean  that  we  must  go  back  to  the  old  Greek  idea  that 
poetry  be  a  vehicle  for  the  inculcation  of  the  common- 
place ethics.  Nor  does  it  imply  that  we  cannot  appre- 
ciate a  poet  because  we  disapprove  of  the  religion  or 
political  party  with  which  he  is  affiliated. 

In  the  conclusion  of  his  essay  on  "How  a  Young  Man 
Should  Study  Poetry,"  Plutarch  shows  that  the  philos- 
opher and  the  poet  are  engaged  in  the  same  mission.  He 
takes  passages  from  the  poets  and  shows  us  that  they  are 
similar  to  those  he  selects  from  the  philosophers.  The 
doctrines  of  Plato  and  Pythagoras  agree  with  the  ideas 
by  the  dramatists  spoken  on  the  stage,  and  with  those 
that  lyricists  sang  to  the  harp.  We  may  accept  Plutarch's 
views  except  in  so  far  as  he  urges  that  poetry  should 
preach  dogmatic  and  conventional  ethics. 

We  also  see  that  parts  of  Dante,  Pope,  and  Shelley 
may  be  placed  parallel  respectively  to  passages  from 
thinkers  who  influenced  them,  Aquinas,  Bolingbroke,  and 

*  "Moral  nihilism  inevitably  involves  an  aesthetic  nihilism.  .  .  . 
The  values  of  literature  are  in  the  last  resort  moral.  .  .  .  Liter- 
ature should  be  a  kingdom  where  a  sterner  morality,  a  more 
strenuous  liberty  prevails." — J.  Middleton  Murry. 


134         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Godwin,  to  learn  that  the  poetry  resided  in  the  original 
philosophic  prose  passage.  It  was  enhanced  not  by  the 
verse  form  but  by  the  process  of  ecstatic  re-statement. 

Should  we  say  that  Cowper  and  Wordsworth  are 
poets,  and  that  Rousseau,  from  whom  they  got  many 
ideas,  is  not?  Is  Browning  only  a  poet  and  no  philos- 
opher, and  is  Carlyle  only  a  philosopher  and  not  a  poet? 
Is  the  verse  of  Goethe  where  pantheism  is  taught, 
poetry,  and  do  you  find  no  poetry  at  all  in  Spinoza's 
Ethics? 

Among  the  most  famous  philosophical  passages  of 
Shakespeare  is  the  one  in  The  Tempest  describing  the 
transitoriness  of  this  world  and  ending  with  the  famous 
line  about  our  life  being  rounded  with  sleep.  If  there 
is  anything  in  Shakespeare  that  is  poetry  of  a  high  order, 
this  famous  passage  is,  and  yet  it  is  really  philosophy. 
It  is  poetry  not  because  it  is  in  blank  verse  or  has  rhythm, 
but  because  the  ideas  are  stated  in  an  emotional  and 
ecstatic  manner.  There  is  poetry  in  ideas  and  those 
critics  who  shrink  from  applying  the  word  poetry  to  in- 
tellectual performances  are  urged  to  honeycomb  their 
Shakespeare  for  numerous  ideas  that  are  beyond  question 
poetry. 

A  great  idea  is  poetry ;  a  profound  and  f arseeing  idea 
is  poetry,  whether  written  with  rhythm  or  not.  If  a  com- 
monplace thought,  rhythmically  adorned,  may  sometimes 
be  poetry,  most  certainly  a  profound  idea  ecstatically  but 
unrhythmically  expressed  is  poetry. 

What  is  the  difference  between  poetry  and  philosophy? 
Tf  we  examine  into  the  nature  of  each  we  will  find  that 
there  is  a  line  at  which  they  meet  and  where  it  is 
hard  to  distinguish  one  from  the  other.  As  a  rule,  the 
principles  of  metaphysics,  epistemology  and  logic  as 
written  down  in  the  average  philosophical  work  seldom 


MORAL  AND   PHILOSOPHICAL   IDEAS  135 

are  poetry.  Only  occasionally  have  the  philosophers 
waxed  ecstatic.  Yet  many  novelists,  essayists  and  verse 
writers  have  made  many  of  these  philosophical  principles 
poetry  by  stating  them  in  an  ecstatic  manner.  Any  phil- 
osophical principle  arousing  our  emotions  is  poetry. 

The  general  truths  of  sociology,  ethics  and  psychology 
form  the  subject  matter  of  the  literature  of  ecstasy,  but 
they  are  poetry  only  when  ecstatically  treated.  The 
psychological  novel  and  the  problem  play  deal  with  these 
truths.  Go  to  some  original  treatises  on  sociological, 
moral  or  psychological  subjects  and  omit  the  statistics, 
the  laboratory  work  and  the  cold  hard  reasoning  and 
you  will  often  find  great  ideas  emotionally  stated  that 
belong  to  the  literature  of  ecstasy.  We  have  parted 
with  the  idea  that  an  author  must  be  tearing  a  passion 
to  tatters,  or  telling  a  story,  or  uttering  a  complaint,  in 
order  to  produce  poetry.  When  Herbert  Spencer  analyzes 
love  for  a  page  and  a  half  and  tells  us  how  it  is  com- 
posed, we  exclaim,  this  is  the  literature  of  ecstasy  even 
though  we  find  it  in  a  treatise  on  psychology.  He 
describes  to  us  how  we  feel  when  we  love  by  enumer- 
ating to  us  the  different  sensations  we  experience. 
(Principles  of  Psychology  Vol.  I,  Part  IV,  Ch.  8,  Par. 
215.)  The  passage  may  not  be  passionate  poetry,  but 
it  would  not  have  been  out  of  place  in  a  novel  by  Stend- 
hal, George  Eliot  or  Meredith. 

When  Freud  reveals  our  souls  to  ourselves,  when 
Fabre  writes  a  book  on  the  doings  of  insects,  we  often 
are  reading  poetry  or  the  literature  of  ecstasy,  when  we 
think  we  are  reading  science. 

We  might  select  many  passages  from  philosophical 
works  that  belong  to  the  literature  of  ecstasy,  passages 
from  Bacon,  Descartes,  Spinoza,  and  Hume,  but  more 
especially  from  Plato,  Pascal,  Schopenhauer  and  Nietzsche. 


136         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

There  are  isolated  paragraphs  in  their  works  wherein  we 
find  the  imagination  and  the  intellect  fused ;  we  cannot  dis- 
tinguish that  which  belongs  to  the  realm  of  logic  and  that 
which  is  the  result  of  pure  emotion.  Of  philosophers 
of  our  own  time,  Bergson  and  Bertrand  Russel  have 
occasional  passages  where  a  profound  idea  is  emotional- 
ized. Hence  these  belong  to  the  literature  of  ecstasy,  or 
poetry. 

We  must  no  longer  conclude  that  only  that  is  poetry 
which  sings  a  song  in  verse.  It  is  just  because  the  verse 
lyric,  epic,  and  tragedy  are  among  the  oldest  forms  of 
literature  that  the  theories  of  poetry  have  been  built  up 
by  examining  chiefly  these  forms.  Aristotle's  Poetics,  ex- 
cept for  a  few  vital  passages,  has  done  more  mischief  in 
literary  criticism  than  his  Logic  has  done  in  philosophy. 

What  a  queer  definition  of  poetry  is  that  which  in- 
cludes a  metrical  insipid  utterance  or  a  versified  fact  of 
microscopic  importance,  and  excludes  the  sublime  reflec- 
tions of  philosophers  who  contemplate  the  nature  of  the 
entire  cosmos,  who  fathom  the  mysteries  of  the  universe, 
and  who  state  for  us  our  relation  to  it  and  give  us  pro- 
found conceptions  of  it.  If  one  finds  poetry  only  in  the 
saccharine  sonnets  of  our  magazine  writers  and  none 
at  all  in  the  great  philosophers,  he  does  not  understand 
what  poetry  is.  If  you,  however,  call  a  philosophical 
principle  poetry  when  you  find  it  in  verse,  you  must  ad- 
mit that  the  poetry  was  there  before  it  was  put  in  verse, 
in  the  prose  version.  For  poetry,  not  being  a  branch  of 
literature  but  an  emotional  spirit  bathing  all  literature, 
also  holds  philosophical  ideas,  intellectual  conceptions  in 
solution,  whenever  these  are  in  prose  and  move  to  ecstasy. 

Aristotle  and  many  others  were  also  absorbed  a  to  the 
difference  between  poetry  and  history,  as  they  had  been 
between  poetry  and  philosophy.  He  stated  truly  enough 


MORAL  AND  PHILOSOPHICAL  IDEAS  137 

that  Homer  as  a  poet  did  not  differ  from  Herodotus  as  a 
historian  simply  because  of  their  difference  in  metre.  He 
found  that  the  difference  between  poetry  and  history  lay 
in  this,  that  poetry  dealt  with  the  universal  and  history 
with  the  particular.  This  definition  means  very  little 
to  us  to-day  even  though  commentators  try  to  explain 
that  Aristotle  includes  under  poetry  any  treatment  also 
of  the  particular  which  presents  universal  situations  and 
depicts  universal  traits.  History,  however,  also  treats 
of  the  universal,  for  it  records  universal  traits  in  the 
particular  events  which  it  describes.  Aristotle's  distinc- 
tion falls,  for  history  and  poetry  deal  with  both  the  par- 
ticular and  universal.  We  cannot  say  with  Aristotle  that 
history  tells  what  Alcibiades  actually  did,  while  poetry 
would  tell  what  any  man  would  do.  An  actual  emotional 
account  of  the  deeds  and  character  of  Alcibiades  is 
poetry,  as  you  will  observe  by  reading  Plutarch. 

For  all  historical  writing  may  be  poetical  and  contain 
poems,  if  the  ecstasy  is  there.  What  distinguishes  the 
poetry  in  history  is  the  emotion,  and  all  history  that  is 
a  dry  narrative  is  history  and  not  poetry.  Thucydides's 
Peloponnesian  War  and  Carlyle's  French  Revolution  con- 
tain much  poetry  though  they  deal  with  the  particular, 
but  they  are  made  poetry  by  the  ecstasy.  Some  of  Hero- 
dotus is  poetry,  and  much  of  Homer  is  history. 

Again  Aristotle's  distinction  is  obsolete  in  these  days 
of  prose  fiction  which  deals  with  the  particular,  and  often 
with  the  actual,  and  merely  changes  the  names.  And 
these  novels  often  contain  poems.  We  recall  Fielding's 
distinction  between  novels  and  histories,  the  former  be- 
ing true  in  everything  but  the  names,  and  the  latter  be- 
ing false  in  everything  but  the  names. 

There  is  poetry  in  Livy,  Tacitus,  in  Gibbon,  Froude, 
and  all  great  historians. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

POETRY  RISES  ABOVE  ART  FOR  ART'S  SAKE  AND  INTUITION 

THE  first  lengthy  formulation  of  the  theory  of  art  for 
art's  sake  was  made,  I  believe,  by  Gautier  in  the  preface 
to  his  Madamoisellc  de  Maupin,  in  1833.  The  theory  it- 
self had  previously  also  been  advanced  and  put  into 
practice  by  Keats,  and  a  little  later  by  Poe.  Hugo  claims 
to  have  been  the  first  one  to  have  used  the  term.  He  was 
also  one  of  the  most  bitter  opponents  of  the  idea,  as  the 
readers  of  his  Shakespeare  will  note.  The  view  was  sup- 
ported in  France  by  Baudelaire  and  Flaubert,  and  by 
later  schools  like  the  Symbolists.  In  England  Swinburne 
made  an  excellent  defense  of  it  in  his  book  on  William 
Blake.  The  poets  of  "The  Nineties"  like  Wilde  and  Sy- 
mons  wrote  in  favor  of  it.  Mention  should  also  be  made 
of  an  exceedingly  good  chapter  on  the  Dignity  of  Tech- 
nique in  R.  A.  M.  Stevenson's  Velasquez,  and  especially 
Whistler's  Ten  o'Clock  Lecture. 

Needless  to  say,  most  of  these  writers  had  their  own 
conception  of  what  art  for  art's  sake  was.  They  agreed 
on  several  phases  of  it — that  the  subject  matter  and 
ideas  of  a  work  of  art  did  not  count,  that  the  important 
thing  was  the  execution,  that  art  was  not  to  be  judged 
by  any  standard  of  morality,  that  it  had  its  own  morality, 
and  that  it  did  not  matter  if  from  a  conventional  point  of 
view  it  was  immoral,  provided  it  was  well  executed.  The 
theory  was  antagonistic  to  the  introduction  of  ideas,  of 
humanitarian  motives,  of  tendencies  to  the  portrayal  of 

138 


POETRY  RISES  ABOVE  ART  139 

life  and  the  analysis  of  emotions.  Its  use  was  certainly 
an  undemocratic  phase  of  art. 

In  many  respects  the  theory  awakens  sympathy  in 
all  lovers  of  literature ;  it  was  a  reaction  to  the  moralist 
view  which  wanted  art  to  teach  the  commonplace  ethical 
notions  we  all  know.  Art  has  always  had  an  enemy  in 
the  bourgeois  moralist.  He  always  looked  for  a  sermon, 
and  stamped  the  artist  as  immoral  who  arrived  at  con- 
clusions different  from  those  countenanced  by  the  church 
or  the  state.  He  was  not  satisfied  to  read  of  a  wonder- 
ful portrayal  of  a  passion,  done  as  a  lesson  in  psychology 
without  any  moral  comments  by  the  author.  He  wanted 
the  artist  to  act  like  a  preacher  and  condemn  at  all  times, 
instead  of  portray.  The  Puritan  opposed  the  truthful 
description  of  natural  emotions ;  he  looked  askance  upon 
references  to  the  body ;  he  wanted  people  drawn  in  obedi- 
ence to  laws,  instead  of  as  breaking  through  them.  He 
tried  to  thrust  subjects  upon  the  artist  and  limit  him.  He 
had  no  ear  for  sound,  no  eye  for  color,  no  appreciation 
of  beauty. 

Little  wonder  that  the  artist  lost  patience  and  sent  mor- 
ality to  the  devil,  and  deified  technique  and  deliberately 
chose  unseemly  subjects.  The  disciples  of  art  for  art's 
sake  did  much  good  to  the  cause  of  art.  They  broadened 
its  field.  They  gave  the  artist  the  right  to  write  about  a 
corpse  or  delirium  tremens,  to  describe  a  murder  or  a 
crime  without  pointing  out  lessons.  They  permitted  him 
to  use  his  imagination  to  the  full  extent,  and  to  invent 
any  forms  he  chose. 

But  the  theory  overrode  itself.  It  became  an  apology 
for  abuses  of  art.  Writers  began  to  create  meaningless 
jargon,  to  waste  words  on  trite  ideas,  to  avoid  all  con- 
tact with  life,  to  eliminate  man  as  a  subject  of  art.  Art 
lacked  soul,  and  if  it  showed  a  personality  behind  it,  it 


140         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

was  a  petty,  sterile  and  inane  one.  Art  fought  against 
intellect  as  well  as  against  morals.  Even  those  who  advo- 
cated it  were  writing  in  direct  violation  of  it.  Flau- 
bert's realistic  novel  Madame  Bovary  and  Swinburne's 
Songs  Before  Sunrise  were  not  art  for  art's  sake.  The 
Ballad  of  Reading  Gaol  was  not  art  for  art's  sake;  im- 
prisonment had  changed  Wilde's  views.  Men  like  Gau- 
tier  and  Swinburne,  who  were  the  most  ardent  cham- 
pions of  the  theory  of  art  for  art's  sake,  found  them- 
selves in  a  peculiarly  inconsistent  predicament  by  being 
the  greatest  admirers  of  Victor  Hugo,  much  of  whose 
work  was  written  with  humanitarian  motives.  Hearn 
in  America  started  out  as  a  believer  in  the  theory  and 
ended  by  attacking  it. 

Tolstoy  wrote  most  bitterly  against  the  idea,  and  we 
may  say  that  from  the  time  of  the  appearance  of  his  What 
is  Art?  in  1897,  the  theory  fell  into  disrepute.  Not  that 
people  accepted  Tolstoy's  views  that  art  should  teach  the 
love  of  God  and  man,  but  his  idea  did  much  to  humanize 
art.  Before  Tolstoy,  Nietzsche  had  also  taken  a  fling  at 
the  theory. 

Critics  to-day  recognize  that  life  forms  the  substance 
of  art,  that  art  gets  all  its  material  from  life  and  that 
man  is  properly  the  subject  of  art,  thinking  man  as  well 
as  emotional  man.  They  further  perceive  that  literature 
is  so  human  in  its  origins  that  even  unconscious  human 
emotions  are  present  where  they  were  not  suspected. 
The  more  we  humanize  literature  the  greater  art  does  it 
become.  It  is  true,  however,  that  after  the  art  work  is 
completed,  it  has  influence  on  life.  Our  lives  may  be  de- 
voted to  art,  we  may  have  life  for  art's  sake,  but  not  art 
for  art's  sake. 

Still,  art  for  art's  sake  is  a  good  theory  to  be  invoked 
against  the  extreme  didactic-minded  one  who  thinks 


POETRY  RISES  ABOVE  ART  141 

nothing  should  be  written  unless  it  illustrates  a  lesson  in 
our  commonplace  and  bourgeois  morality,  a  morality  very 
often  false  and  outworn.  They  would  ask  writers  to 
show  us  men  conforming  to  this  morality,  instead  of  re- 
volting from  it.  They  would  make  literature  exalt  self- 
sacrifice  in  all  circumstances  and  would  stamp  out  any 
tendencies  to  liberal  speculation.  They  demand  that  poetry 
uphold  society  in  all  its  institutions,  teach  obedience,  and 
prevail  on  us  to  bow  down  before  the  mandates  of  priests 
and  capitalists.  But  literary  men  are  often  at  variance 
with  the  moral  views  entertained  by  the  clergy  and  the 
ruling  classes,  and  they  have  the  right  to  illustrate  the 
views  of  morality  that  they  consider  much  higher  than 
the  customs  of  society.  An  author  should  not  be  bound 
by  the  views  of  his  age.  He  should  in  fact  expose  them 
and  show  their  evil  influence.  He  does  not,  however, 
then  write  in  conformity  with  the  theory  of  art  for  art's 
sake,  for  he  expresses  another  morality  than  that  of  so- 
ciety's, and  thus  has  a  higher  moral  purport  in  view. 
Ibsen's  greatness  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  did  not  sub- 
scribe to  conventional  morality:  he  attacked  it  and  thus 
he  really  was  an  artist  with  a  moral  aim. 

Brandes  has  shown  in  his  essay  on  Bjornson  how  the 
attack  upon  art  with  a  purpose  is  really  often  a  dis- 
guised means  of  objecting  to  liberal  thought  in  literature. 
Art  for  art's  sake  occasionally  thus  becomes  an  apology 
for  conventional  morals  too.  Most  of  the  great  works 
were  written  with  a  purpose.  Dante  and  Milton  have 
left  records  in  their  prose  works  of  the  purpose  of  their 
poems.  But  no  one  objected  to  the  purpose  of  these 
poets,  because  they  defend  conventional  morality.  Yet  as 
soon  as  literature  tries  to  advance  new  ideas  we  hear  the 
cry  against  its  moralizing  and  didactic  tendency.  Art  for 
art's  sake  is  then  the  shout  of  even  the  conventional  moral- 


142        THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

ist.  Those  who  declare  themselves  against  the  tendency 
of  the  intellectual  element  in  literature  are  often  those  who 
fear  new  ideas;  they  would  want  only  romance,  homely 
morals,  happy  endings  and  impossible  adventures,  con- 
stant triumph  of  good,  etc.  They  do  not  understand  what 
literature  has  to  do  with  problems  of  marriage  and  di- 
vorce, the  state  and  the  individual.  They  want  it  to  be 
separated  from  real  life.  Nevertheless,  they  cannot  ig- 
nore the  great  books  of  our  day  which  deal  with  these 
questions.  They  have  been  driven  to  the  theory  of  "art 
for  art's  sake"  by  their  hatred  of  liberal  ideas. 

"The  formula,  'written  with  a  purpose,'  "  says  Brandes, 
"has  been  far  too  long  employed  as  an  effective  scare- 
crow to  drive  authors  away  from  the  fruit  that  beckons 
to  them  from  the  modern  tree  of  knowledge." 

When  Whitman,  Ibsen,  Tolstoy  and  Zola  brought  us 
messages  in  ecstatic  prose,  the  enemies  of  intellect  in 
art  called  them  preachers  of  filthy  ideas,  misguided  mor- 
alists, and  would  not  consider  them  as  artists  and  poets. 
The  moralist  and  aesthete  joined  forces  in  attacking 
Balzac  and  Stendhal  when  these  novelists  gave  us  unpop- 
ular ideas  emotionally  expressed.  The  critic  who  hates 
advanced  thought  exclaims  that  he  wants  no  ideas  in  art 
at  all ;  he  does  not  wish  it  to  become  the  vehicle  of  views 
he  personally  dislikes.  Hence  at  times  even  the  Philistine 
critic  who  opposed  the  introduction  of  intellect  in  art 
found  himself  in  harmony  with  members  of  the  art  for 
art's  sake  school. 

Nothing  better  illustrates  the  harm  which  may  result 
from  the  theory  that  shuns  a  purpose  in  art,  than  the 
neglect  it  brings  about  for  books  with  an  unpopular  mes- 
sage. England,  for  example,  has  neglected  the  best 
work  of  one  of  the  poets  of  the  nineties,  who  intellectually 
ranks  with  her  best  poets.  Who  reads  the  later  work 


POETRY  RISES  ABOVE  ART  143 

of  Robert  Buchanan?  Attention  is  riveted  to  his 
early  lyrics,  and  good  as  these  are,  his  more  thoughtful 
poetry  has  been  forgotten.  A.  Stoddart- Walker  wrote 
after  Buchanan's  death  Robert  Buchanan,  the  Poet  of 
Modern  Revolt,  and  Harriet  Jay  wrote  a  biography. 
Attention  was  called  in  these  volumes  to  the  later  works 
of  Buchanan,  where  he  stood  for  liberty  of  thought. 
Nor  was  he  didactic  in  his  pleas,  in  such  poems  as  The 
City  of  Dreams,  The  Wandering  Jew,  The  Ballad  of 
Mary  the  Mother,  The  Outcast,  The  Devil's  Case,  and 
The  New  Rome.  Lecky  called'  The  City  of  Dreams  the 
modern  Pilgrim's  Progress,  and  said  that  it  would  take 
a  prominent  position  in  the  literature  of  the  time.  But 
no  one  knows  these  poems,  and  of  Buchanan's  work  only 
a  few  ballads  are  known.  Buchanan  is  not  any  more 
didactic  than  Browning,  but  since  he  represents  bold 
speculation  (and  also  made  too  many  personal  enemies) 
he  was  throttled  by  Philistinism. 

The  opponents  of  utilitarianism  in  art  have  been  the 
calumniators  of  poets  with  ideas  unacceptable  to  the  ma- 
jority. They  have  hindered  the  popularity  of  pessimis- 
tic poets  like  Leopardi  and  Thomson.  They  are  shocked 
by  the  morbidities  of  Dostoievsky  and  Strindberg.  But 
every  author  has  the  right  to  describe  emotions  without 
being  compelled  to  draw  a  moral  from  them.  In  such 
case  the  writer  becomes  a  great  psychologist,  and  his 
work  is  by  no  means  devoid  of  intellectual  content.  Thus 
the  stories  of  Poe  which  have  no  moral  outlook  are  really 
stories  with  a  purpose  for  they  are  profound  documents 
in  psychology.  To  them  psychologists  like  Mosso  have 
gone  for  studies  of  the  emotion  of  fear.  One  finds  ideas 
in  them  that  throw  light  on  the  nature  of  our  emotions. 
Hence  Brownell  in  his  well  written  essay  on  Poe  which 
attacked  him  because  of  his  indifference  to  moral  prob- 


144        THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

lems  (a  view  in  which  Ho  wells  and  James  concur)  is 
wrong  in  denying  to  Poe  a  high  place  in  art.  Poe  did 
what  all  artists  do;  he  drew  on  his  emotions  and  if  he 
could  portray  fear  and  grief  for  death,  it  was  because  he 
had  known  them.  Graham  describes  the  timid  nature  of 
Poe,  who  was  afraid  to  be  himself  alone.  That  feeling 
accounts  for  the  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher.  Poe's 
stories  are  rich  in  ideas,  in  valuable  psychological  data. 
None  of  them,  except  William  Wilson,  has  an  ethical 
aim,  but  they  all  have  an  intellectual,  utilitarian  purport, 
in  giving  us  profound  knowledge  of  man's  hidden  emo- 
tions. They  are  the  result  of  Poe's  keen  intellect  as  well 
as  of  his  emotions.  They  have  anticipated  many  re- 
searches by  psychologists ;  they  have  set  circulating  pro- 
found views  of  the  psychic  constitution  of  man.  They 
thus  became  art  with  a  purpose,  not  however  to  spread 
ethical  truisms,  but  broad  liberating  ideas. 

Those  art  for  art's  sake  critics  who  take  their  inspira- 
tion from  Poe's  essay  on  the  Poetic  Principle,  sadly  mis- 
understand their  critic.  Except  in  two  poems  written 
as  metrical  and  musical  experiments,  The  Bells  and 
Ulalume,  Poe's  intellect  adorned  all  the  poetry  he  wrote  in 
verse  as  well  as  prose.  Read  his  prose  poems,  Shadow, 
Silence,  The  Colloquy  of  Monos  and  Una,  The  Con- 
versation of  Eiros  and  Charmion,  The  Power  of  Words, 
and  Eureka.  He  was  justified  in  his  pleading  that  poetry 
should  not  become  the  mere  vehicle  of  moral  common- 
places, for  these  are  not  beautiful,  and  the  vogue  of  the 
New  England  school  was  beginning  to  make  the  moral 
aims  of  poetry  too  paramount. 

The  poet  should  be  free  and  if  he  wants  to  emotionalize 
a  social  message  he  should  be  allowed  to  do  so,  risking1 
aesthetic  value  if  he  becomes  didactic,  or  is  false  in  his 
views.  And  he  should  also  be  allowed  to  describe  beauty 


POETRY  RISES  ABOVE  ART  145 

and  emotions,  without  being  compelled  to  draw  a  moral 
conclusion  therefrom. 

Croce,  who  defined  poetry  as  intuition,  has  helped  to 
keep  on  its  last  legs  the  idea  of  art  for  art's  sake.  He 
falsely  teaches  that  poetry  deals  with  pure  emotions,  and 
that  emotions  and  ideas  are  two  separate  functions,  one 
of  the  feeling  man,  the  other  of  the  thinking  man. 

Though  Croce  admits  that  the  intellectual  has  its 
aesthetic  side,  that  art  deals  with  the  philosophic  and 
moral,  yet  this  definition  of  literature  in  terms  of  in- 
tuition is  not  a  true  account  of  the  nature  of  literature,  for 
he  regards  the  intuitive  faculty  as  totally  opposed  to  the 
logical  faculty,  a  Kantian  relic.  Intuition,  however,  is 
the  combined  product  of  all  the  logical  faculties  exer- 
cised by  man  in  the  past,  just  as  the  action  of  an  in- 
voluntary muscle  is  the  continued  action  of  a  muscle  once 
voluntary,  but  which  by  force  of  habit  for  ages  became 
involuntary. 

Intuition  is  not  merely  the  knowledge  of  our  hearts 
but  of  our  brain  as  well.  The  great  novels  and  plays  of 
the  world's  literature  are  the  artistic  results  of  the  in- 
tellect collaborating  with  the  emotions.  Croce  presents 
an  ingenious  explanation  to  enable  him  to  call  works  of 
art  which  are  full  of  intellectuality,  works  of  intuition. 
He  says  that  the  effect  of  the  work  as  a  whole  is  that 
of  an  intuition.  He  holds  that  when  intellectual  concepts 
are  mingled  with  intuition  they  are  not  then  intellectual 
concepts  but  part  of  the  intuition.  If  this  be  so,  the  rule 
works  the  other  way  around.  If  intuition  is  mingled  with 
intellectual  concepts  appearing  in  a  philosophical  or 
scientific  work,  why  not  then  say  that  the  intuitive  quality 
disappears  and  becomes  part  of  the  intellectual  concept 
and  that  the  scientific  or  philosophic  work  becomes  a 
work  of  intuition  or  a  work  of  art  as  a  whole?  There 


146         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

is  intellectual  working  in  Hamlet  and  intuitive  expression 
in  a  dialogue  of  Plato.  The  former  is  not  wholly  intuitve 
nor  the  latter  wholly  intellectual. 

This  is  Croce's  great  fault — that  he  tries  to  rid  poetry 
of  what  he  calls  any  suggestion  of  intellectualism.*  He 
identifies  the  first  rudimentary  form  of  knowledge  with 
intuition,  he  distinguishes  the  so-called  first  degree  of  the 
activity  of  the  mind,  the  unreflecting,  unreasoning  emo- 
tion, from  intellectual  and  perceptual  knowledge,  which 
involves  concepts,  so  that  his  view  of  poetry  is  that  of  the 
art  for  art's  sake  school, — that  poetry  deals  not  with  ideas 
but  with  intuitive  feeling. 

Now,  feeling  and  thought  are  not  separable.  Feeling 
involves  knowledge  and  instant  reflection.  The  bereaved 
poet  knows  and  reflects  on  many  things  at  the  very  in- 
stant he  is  suffering  the  shock  of  his  loss.  His  in- 
tellectual and  perceptual  faculties  cannot  be  set  apart 
from  the  psychical  activity  of  his  emotions.  The  authors 
of  the  greatest  English  elegies  philosophized  while  be- 
moaning their  loss.  The  moral,  intellectual  and  logical 
faculties  are  at  work  along  with  the  intuitive  faculty,  or 
immediate  knowledge  of  feeling,  in  all  great  poets. 

It  is  in  his  views  on  intuition  that  Croce  reduces  art 
to  presentation  of  childish  impressions  or  views,  divested 
of  judgment  and  reflection.  He  discourages  reasoning 
and  thinking  on  the  part  of  the  artist.  He  seeks  only  the 
first  instant  of  the  poet's  emotions,  though  he  admits 
that  in  real  life  sensations  are  followed  by  reflections  and 
mental  solutions.  He  thinks  the  purest  artists  are  those 
who  persist  longest  in  that  first  moment  of  intuition,  and 
are  innocent  and  childish  in  their  outlook. 

*  Wordsworth  was  on  better  ground  when  he  said,  "Our  con- 
tinued influxes  of  feeling  are  modified  and  directed  by  our 
thoughts."  Preface  to  Lyrical  Ballads  (1800). 


POETRY  RISES  ABOVE  ART  147 

Art  is  not,  as  Croce  thinks,  devoid  of  the  character  of 
conceptual  knowledge.  No,  discrimination  and  judg- 
ment, distinction  between  reality  and  unreality,  is  an  im- 
portant part  of  the  poet's  work,  and  to  say  that  it  mat- 
ters little  what  the  poet  thinks  or  says  or  concludes,  that 
correct  ideas,  judgments,  statements,  are  not  to  be  sought 
from  him,  is  to  reduce  him  to  the  level  of  a  babbling 
child.  The  ideality  of  poetry  does  not,  as  Croce  thinks, 
disappear  as  soon  as  reflection  and  judgment  enter,  for 
these  may  be  bathed  in  ecstasy.  Croce's  definition  of 
imaginative  literature  excludes  ideas,  except  as  casually 
introduced,  or  as  the  utterances  in  accordance  with  the 
truth  of  the  character  portrayed.  He  levels  literature 
to  a  primitive  degree. 

Croce  seems  to  think  that  art  is  expression  of  only 
intuition,  but  is  not  expression  of  intellectual  concepts 
which  he  claims  belong  to  philosophy.  He  who  did  so 
much  to  clear  away  ithe  artificial  divisions  reigning  in 
the  various  arts,  commits  a  greater  error.  He  assigns 
one  kind  of  expression — intuition — to  one  branch  of 
human  endeavor — art;  and  another  kind  of  expression 
— true  concepts — to  another  branch  i)f  human  endeavor, — 
logic.  Yet  he  admits  that  intuition  and  concepts  are  two 
moments  in  a  single  process.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  ex- 
pressed concepts  are  also  literature  .when  emotionalized, 
and  logic  is  poetry  when  combined  with  ecstasy. 

Man  cannot  separate  the  two  faculties,  and  we  seldom 
have  what  Croce  calls  pure  intuition,  that  is,  knowledge 
free  of  concepts.  Hence  poetry  scarcely  deals  with  in- 
tuition in  Croce's  understanding  of  the  term.  Croce 
takes  care  to  distinguish  intuition  from  mere  physical 
sensation,  and  from  association.  For  him  intuition  is  not 
unconscious  memory  but  the  first  degree  of  the  mind's 
activity  which  is  expression.  One  fails  to  see  why  even 


148         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

sensation  may  not  be  intuition  and  hence  art ;  some  of  the 
world's  best  literature  describes  hunger.  And  to  deny 
that  intuition  includes  unconscious  memory  is  to  de- 
prive it  of  its  essential  quality. 

Croce  lost  sight  of  the  importance  of  that  phase  of 
art  which  deals  with  the  thinking  man  who  feels,  and  he 
tried  to  bridge  over  the  gap  by  asserting  that  what  de- 
termined the  difference  of  the  intellectual  and  intuitive 
fact  lay  in  the  result,  in  the  effects  aimed  at  by  their  au- 
thors. Yet  Virgil  thought  he  was  a  poet  in  his  Georgics 
but  he  gave  us  a  book  in  farming  instead.  Plato  sought 
to  be  a  philosopher  in  his  Banquet  but  he  wrote  a  poem 
also. 

Croce's  conclusions  lead  to  strange  anomalies.  His 
view  that  philosophical  passages,  that  is,  intellectual  con- 
cepts occurring  in  a  novel  or  play,  become  part  of  the 
intuition  of  the  author,  would  mean  that  the  most  un- 
ecstatic  concept  transposed  from,  say  Hegel,  to  a  Shakes- 
pearean play,  becomes  intuition.  The  converse  would 
also  follow  that  a  passage  of  Shakespeare  incorporated 
in  Hegel  is  no  longer  poetry. 

One  of  the  results  of  Croce's  aesthetic  views  on  intui- 
tion is  to  drive  out  of  literary  criticism  the  exercise  of  the 
intellect.  He  would  have  us  judge  a  book  by  its  own 
standards  and  merely  seek  to  find  if  the  author  succeeded 
in  doing  what  he  intended.  This  view  has  been  wrongly 
attributed  also  to  Goethe  and  Carlyle.  It  is,  however, 
Maupassant's  view  about  the  novel  as  he  expounded  it 
in  his  preface  to  Pierre  and  Jean.  We  cannot  accept  this 
view.  We  must  ask  why  does  the  author  intend  what  he 
does,  and  is  he  justified  in  his  intentions?  We  must  go 
back  of  his  intentions  and  show  him  that  his  intellect  and 
outlook  are  due  to  certain  causes  and  we  must  state 
whether  or  not  we  agree  with  him,  and  why.  An  author 


POETRY  RISES  ABOVE  ART  149 

may  record  his  ecstasy  in  expounding  absurd  ideas.  I 
want  to  know  why  he  believes  in  these  ideas  and  I  want 
to  see  if  he  can  make  me  believe  them.  If  he  does  not, 
I  cannot  satisfy  myself  with  studying  his  intentions,  even 
when  they  are  in  the  form'  of  verse  or  in  a  novel.  I  also 
am  concerned  with  the  question  whether  he  is  right  in 
accepting  these  ideas,  though  I  admit  his  sincerity. 

Again  I  take  up  a  Puritanical  poem.  I  cannot  judge 
the  author  by  merely  studying  the  writer's  intentions  and 
contenting  myself  with  the  knowledge  that  he  has  faith- 
fully and  beautifully  recorded  them.  No,  I  want  to  know 
why  he  is  a  Puritan ;  I  seek  to  show  the  folly  of  his  ex- 
pression; I  must  register  my  protest  that  I  have  not  been 
moved  by  him,  that  I  consider  him  intellectually  and 
morally  deficient. 

The  great  fault  of  Croce's  views,  however,  is  that  in 
looking  upon  art  as  expression  he  takes  no  interest  in 
the  question  whether  it  meets  with  sympathy.  It  is  true 
he  recognizes  that  the  poet  often  expresses  our  own  in- 
tuitions for  us,  when  he  expresses  his  own.  But  he  is 
not  concerned  with  the  question  whether  the  poet  has  a 
right  to  feel  that  way  and  whether  he  has  a  sympa- 
thetic audience  no  matter  how  small.  Yet  the  artist  who 
expresses  his  intuitions  is  always  bound  to  have  some  au- 
dience. It  is  because  "every  atom  that  belongs  to  me  as 
good  belongs  to  you."  He  is  bound  to  have  sympathizers. 
If  Croce  had  said  that  the  artist  should  not  be  concerned 
because  the  majority  does  not  agree  with  him,  we  could 
follow  him,  but  only  because  we  think  the  artist  is  right 
and  the  majority  is  wrong.  But  to  cast  aside  the  ques- 
tion of  sympathy  altogether,  to  refuse  to  take  into  con- 
sideration the  emotions  of  any  readers,  is  to  demoralize 
art  and  cast  intelligence  out  of  it. 

It  cannot  be  repeated  then  too  often  that  poetry  is  not 


ISO         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

a  matter  of  emotions  only,  but  of  intellectual  perception 
and  moral  outlook  as  well.  The  poet  who  has  described 
a  painful  episode  in  his  life  does  not  always  just  merely 
record  the  pain,  he  goes  further  than  his  intuition.  He 
thinks  and  judges  and  condemns  and  plans.  He  is  also 
a  philosopher  and  a  moralist,  excited  to  such  states  by 
his  intuition.  It  wasn't  intuition  that  created  the  plays 
of  Shakespeare  and  Ibsen,  it  was  a  moral  and  intellectual 
vision  working  with  the  poet's  intuition.  Logic,  science, 
metaphysics,  ethics,  are  part  of  the  poetic  material.  All 
ideas  are  philosophic  or  scientific,  and  emotionally  and 
beautifully  expressed  may  become  poetry  or  literature. 

However,  Croce  did  good  service  in  calling  for  the 
independence  of  art,  since  reformers  and  moralists  often 
seek  to  force  upon  art  a  practical  end  outside  and  be- 
side it.  He  also  admits  that  the  practical  and  aesthetic 
are  often  found  united,  and  that  it  would  be  erroneous 
to  maintain  that  the  artist's  independence  of  vision  should 
be  extended  to  the  communication.  "If  art  be  understood 
as  the  externalization  of  art,  then  utility  and  morality 
have  a  perfect  right  to  deal  with  it ;  that  is  to  say,  the  right 
one  possesses  to  deal  with  one's  own  household."  Since 
the  artist  selects  from  his  intuitions  when  he  writes,  his 
selection  is  governed  by  the  economic  conditions  of  life 
and  of  its  moral  direction.  Hence  Croce  finds  the  artist's 
use  of  the  concepts  of  morality  to  some  extent  justified. 

But  where  the  ideas  dealt  with  by  an  author  are  such 
as  all  accept,  the  beauty  of  the  work  depends  on  the  man- 
ner in  which  it  is  written.  Here  he  does  not  write  for 
the  purpose  of  the  underlying  idea,  which  he  uses  merely 
as  a  pretext  for  artistic  work.  He  seeks  to  portray  an 
emotion  and  to  make  the  reader  feel  it.  Drawing  a  pic- 
ture may  be  the  object  of  the  author.  He  may  merely 
try  to  reproduce  with  vividness  what  we  all  see ;  or  nar- 


POETRY  RISES  ABOVE  ART  151 

rate  what  we  all  know.  The  importance  of  his  work  lies 
then  in  its  technique.  There  is  no  question  that  tech- 
nique is  always  to  be  considered  in  determining  one's 
greatness  as  a  writer. 

What  distinguishes  the  layman  from  the  artist  is  that 
the  former  has  no  power  of  craftsmanship;  he  does  not 
understand  the  secrets  of  any  of  the  forms  of  literature; 
he  does  not  know  how  to  set  down  his  thoughts  or  senti- 
ments in  a  pleasing  or  beautiful  manner.  There  are  many 
laymen  who  have  better  views  on  morality  and  who  pos- 
sess a  greater  intellect  than  many  successful  authors,  but 
they  are  not  artists.  If  by  knowing  how  to  tell  a  story  or 
sing  a  poem  they  could  move  the  world, — if  they  had 
craftsmanship, — then  we  would  call  them  artists. 

It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  because  an  author 
has  certain  technical  genius,  but  is  destitute  of  any  in- 
tellect, and  dallies  with  trite  ideas,  that  he  is  a  great 
artist.  To  rank  among  the  great  artists  perfection  of 
form  should  be  welded  with  great  and  important  ideas  of 
life. 


CHAPTER  IX 

HIGH    FORM    OF    POETRY    ECSTATIC    PRESENTATION    OF 
ADVANCED  SOCIAL  IDEALS 

WE  are  always  fascinated  by  the  poet  who  comes  to  the 
aid  of  the  people,  and  is  even  rejected  by  them  for  his 
advanced  ideas.  We  like  to  think  of  the  poet  as  one 
who  belongs  to  the  minority,  as  a  non-conformist,  as  a 
champion  of  liberty,  as  a  sponsor  for  advanced  views. 
We  want  him  not  to  be  uttering  and  singing  the  common- 
places of  to-day  but  the  truths  of  the  morrow.  In  the 
long  run  it  is  the  Shelleys  and  Whitmans  and  Ibsens 
that  count.  Even  though  the  poets  be  mad  like  Don 
Quixote  or  Brand,  and  do  evil  with  good  intentions,  we 
admire  them. 

What  sad  figures  the  versifiers  of  unimportant  con- 
ceits make  when  confronted  with  the  great  poets  who 
use  their  intellect.  These  petty  minstrels  are  the  same 
types  whom  Milton  attacked ;  they  are  the  gossips  of  lit- 
erature who  like  housewives  think  every  trivial  fancy 
must  be  voiced.  And  when  we  are  bored  by  their 
nuances,  their  play  with  words,  their  records  of  unprof- 
itable incidents,  they  tell  us  we  cannot  appreciate  poetry, 
that  we  have  not  "taste."  Man  will  always  listen  even 
though  disapprovingly  and  hostilely,  if  the  poet  reveals 
a  soul.  But  the  minor  versifier  has  no  soul,  or  if  he  has 
he  keeps  it  out  of  his  verses.  He  is  ready  to  talk  to  you 
about  his  spectacles,  his  bath,  or  his  dinner,  but  he  can- 
not refer  to  his  inner  thoughts  and  feelings.  Even  if  he 
does  experience  an  emotion  he  often  conveys  it  through  the 
images  of  books. 

152 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  153 

Poetry  which  champions  human  liberty  and  shows 
characters  battling  for  truth  amidst  persecution  is  always 
great  poetry.  We  like  to  think  of  the  poet  as  Baudelaire 
characterized  him,  one  whose  own  mother  does  not  un- 
derstand him,  one  in  whose  food  the  public  puts  ashes, 
one  with  whom  his  own  wife  is  not  in  sympathy.  We 
like  to  think  of  him  as  an  Ishmaelite,  as  one  who  is 
against  his  age,  since  the  majority  is  often  incapable  of 
welcoming  a  new  and  great  idea  even  emotionally  treated- 
If  he  is  merely  a  patriotic  or  a  religious  or  conventionally 
moral  poet,  he  will  appeal  to  most  people,  but  these  rep- 
resent the  audience  that  is  not  of  an  elevated  intellectual 
order.  He  is  not  universal,  for  people  of  other  coun- 
tries and  religions,  and  the  people  of  the  future  who  will 
break  away  from  the  old  morality  will  not  find  that  he 
reaches  their  sentiments. 

We  want  the  progressive  poet,  and  not  the  eternal 
harper  on  the  commonplace. 

Nor  are  these  views  inconsistent  with  the  assertion 
that  poetry  should  not  be  the  handmaid  of  religion  and 
morality.  If  it  must  be  a  handmaid,  then  let  it  be  the 
handmaid  of  a  universal  religion,  which  finds  its  roots  in 
thought  and  sane  feeling;  of  a  morality  of  love  and  jus- 
tice that  is  still  too  ideal  to  be  grasped  by  the  age.  No 
worthy  poet  to-day  would  write  a  poem  merely  to  teach 
us  simple  precepts  of  morality.  In  a  rude  age,  an  emo- 
tional treatment  of  the  most  commonplace  ethical  maxims 
was  great  poetry  because  these  were  in  advance  of  the 
age.  To  us  such  a  production  is  stale.  Hence  the  "great" 
poem  of  one  age  may  become  nauseating  to  a  later  epoch. 

Poetry  is  a  progressive  art.  The  emotion  playing  about 
the  old  ballads  and  legends  is  not  as  compelling  as  that 
found  in  the  great  modern  novels  and  plays.  Our  great 
later  poets  and  thinkers  are  more  advanced  and  do  not 


154         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

worship  superstition  and  defend  false  beliefs,  or  cele- 
brate revenge  and  war,  as  the  old  primeval  poets  do. 
When  we  think  of  the  ideal  poet,  it  is  not  the  champion 
of  the  middle  class  like  Longfellow  and  Tennyson,  or 
one  full  of  the  early  martial  spirit  and  drawing  right- 
ing heroes  like  the  author  of  Beowulf,  or  the  Nibelungen 
Lied.  Nor  do  we  think  of  the  poet  who  incorporates  the 
religious  errors  and  legends  of  his  time  and  imitates 
ancient  epics,  nor  of  one  who  portrays  a  preceding 
and  bygone  age.  We,  or  at  least  a  few  of  us,  like 
to  think  of  him  as  a  man  drawing  people  in  the  grip 
of  passions  and  battling  for  advanced  ideas.  We  like 
to  think  of  men  like  Shakespeare  and  Ibsen,  Isaiah 
and  Job,  Balzac  and  Cervantes,  Moliere  and  Goethe, 
Byron  and  Shelley,  Burns  and  Heine,  Whitman  and 
Swinburne,  Carducci  and  Nietzsche,  Carlyle  and  Ruskin, 
Dostoievsky  and  Dickens,  Hugo  and  Rolland.  We 
like  to  think  chiefly  of  men  who  were  largely  personal 
in  their  appeal,  and  depicted  their  own  sufferings,  and 
described  grief  brought  about  by  the  social  construction 
of  society  which  they  criticized.  Such  poets  are  no 
dalliers  with  anaemic  feelings.  They  felt  what  they  sang 
and  were  not  afraid  to  give  sway  to  their  emotions  and 
ideas.  They  are  not  didacticists  nor  moralists,  but  emo- 
tional thinkers.  They  do  not  think  that  they  ought  to 
deny  the  claims  of  the  intellect  and  the  moral  vision.  I 
do  not  say  that  other  kinds  of  emotional  writers  are  not 
great  poets.  I  merely  cite  what  I  think  is  a  high  order 
of  poetry.  I  do  not  deny  that  poets  may  avoid  any 
moral  mission  and  just  sing  private  emotions,  whether 
in  prose  or  verse.  The  Troubadours,  and  the  Roman 
Elegists,  De  Musset  and  Verlaine,  Hafiz  and  Keats,  are 
among  the  very  greatest  poets,  even  though  they  are  not 
prophets. 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  155 

Much  of  our  so-called  democratic  poetry  is  not  demo- 
cratic at  all.  Poetry  does  not  become  democratic  be- 
cause some  poets  dwell  on  the  privileges  the  working 
people  of  to-day  have  in  contrast  with  those  working 
people  had  generations  ago,  or  because  writers  have  dis- 
covered that  even  common  people  experience  most  of 
the  emotions  of  the  upper  class.  Literature  cannot  be 
democratic,  while  poets  write  for  the  few  who  use  them 
as  tools  for  their  own  interests,  to  defend  a  system  which 
is  courteously  called  competition  instead  of  exploitation. 
Much  of  our  democratic  literature  is  either  capitalistic 
or  bourgeois  literature  that  gives  a  slight  condescending 
nod  to  the  proletariat.  Many  wealthy  and  cultured  au- 
thors have  taken  up  the  cause  of  the  laborer  just  as  they 
would  that  of  caged  animals.  They  have  suggested  im- 
provements in  the  treatment  of  captives,  but  not  com- 
plete freedom.  Fortunately  we  have  had  works  like 
Galsworthy's  Strife,  Hauptmann's  Weavers,  Verhaeren's 
Dawn,  Sinclair's  Jungle,  Zola's  Germinal,  Gissing's 
Nether  World. 

Poetry  will  tend  to  become  international,  and  instead 
of  seeking  to  encourage  national  prejudices,  will  seek 
to  eradicate  them.  Race  prejudice  is  one  of  the  deepest 
rooted  prejudices  which  inferior  poets  often  encourage. 
The  old  idea  that  the  man  of  another  country  is  a  bar- 
barian and  that  the  alien  is  an  enemy  within  our  gates, 
a  tolerated,  unwelcome  guest,  must  be  eradicated.  Can 
any  one  contemplate  without  disgust  plays  and  photo- 
plays that  depict  Chinese,  Japanese,  Negroes  and  Jews 
as  criminals,  simply  because  of  their  creed  or  color?  Is 
it  true  that  virtue  resides  in  the  breast  of  the  Aryan 
race  only?  The  eighteenth  century  idea  of  the  brother- 
hood of  man  is  not  extinct  and  the  future  will  use  poetry 
to  spread  this  idea.  Poetry  should  not  foster  hatred  of 


156         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

people  because  they  are  followers  of  different  customs. 

It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  poetry  of  the  future 
will  deal  more  with  the  emotions  as  experienced  by  the 
proletariat  class.  The  feelings  to  which  many  of  our 
greatest  poets  have  given  vent  in  recent  years  have 
been  those  of  the  middle  and  capitalistic  class,  just  as 
bards  in  the  past  voiced  the  emotions  of  the  feudalist 
lords,  and  religious  and  military  leaders.  The  connection 
between  economics  and  literature  or  poetry  is  not  as  re- 
mote as  it  seems.  Bernard  Shaw  has  made  use  of  his 
knowledge  of  the  subject  in  constructing  his  plays.  The 
work  of  Gorki,  Hauptmann  and  Zola  has  taken  into  con- 
sideration the  feelings  that  the  average  working  people 
go  through  in  their  struggle  for  existence.  Yet  the 
works  of  these  writers  are  art  or  poetry,  and  not  tracts. 
Literature  written  to  encourage  the  working  men  in  their 
abject  and  ill-paid  condition  will  not  be  countenanced  by 
the  future.  The  songs  of  the  poet  with  lily  white  hands 
who  writes  about  the  dignity  of  toil  and  subservience  to 
the  employer  will  disappear.  The  emotions  connected 
with  the  struggle  for  a  living  and  with  a  desire  for  a  more 
equitable  distribution  of  wealth,  will  be  the  subject  of 
our  poetry. 

Much  of  the  old  poetry  should  be  discouraged  for  it 
is  debased  and  undemocratic.  Take  the  themes  of  the 
epics  of  India,  Persia,  Ireland,  England,  Greece,  Fin- 
land, Rome,  Italy,  Spain,  Germany  and  Iceland,  all  of 
which  are  lauded  as  among  the  greatest  literary  produc- 
tions of  the  world.  Wars  are  the  subjects,  fighters  are  the 
heroes.  The  lust  for  fighting  is  encouraged  instead  of 
being  decried.  While  all  of  these  epics  contain  beautiful 
passages  and  poems  of  glowing  and  even  unsurpassed 
beauty,  they  keep  man  back  in  the  primitive  stage,  and 
countenance  a  state  of  barbarism  that  he  should  outgrow. 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  157 

It  may  after  all  be  fortunate  that  the  earliest  poetry 
of  nations  is  seldom  read,  for  most  of  it  is  of  very  little 
intellectual  value,  celebrating  the  wars  and  religions  of 
the  writers.  Occasionally  there  are  secular  poems  «of 
modern  and  universal  interest  among  them.  But  for  the 
most  part,  fighting  absorbs  the  writers  and  all  their  in- 
terests are  in  bloodshed,  revenge,  cruelty.  There  are 
many  causes  fostering  the  hatreds  and  errors  of  our  day, 
without  our  using  these  old  works  to  spread  them.  We 
find  there  silly  codes  of  honor,  idiotic  conceptions  of  jus- 
tice, amazing  viewpoints  of  morality.  We  want  the 
emotions  celebrated  in  these  old  works  to  die  out  and 
not  to  be  perpetuated. 

The  world  of  democracy  belongs  to  poetry,  not  merely 
the  democracy  of  the  realistic  novel  which  was  willing 
to  concede  that  even  the  poor  man  like  the  old  kings  and 
the  nobility  had  love  tragedies.  Poetry  will  deal  not  with 
that  philanthropy,  which  often  means  the  master  throwing 
crumbs  to  quiet  the  growling  servant.  No,  it  will  be 
based  on  feelings  that  emanate  from  a  sincere  desire  to 
promote  human  justice.  There  is  no  doubt  that  some 
day  our  system  of  society  which  permits  a  man  to  roll  up 
billions  which  he  squanders,  while  it  does  not  allow  an- 
other enough  to  keep  himself  and  his  family  in  comfort, 
will  disappear,  and  poetry  will  express  the  emotions  prev- 
alent under  the  new  order. 

Much  of  the  poetry  of  the  past  has  sung  the  praises 
of  wage  slavery.  The  poetry  of  the  future  will  sing  as 
Amos  did  of  old  the  beauty  of  social  and  economic 
equality.  To-day  the  hero  of  the  poem  is  the  successful 
business  man,  or  the  submissive  contented  working  man, 
just  as  in  the  past  the  soldier  and  the  monk  were  the 
heroes.  To-morrow  it  will  be  the  man  who  fights  for 
economic  justice  for  himself  or  the  masses.  Our  stand- 


158         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

ards  of  economic  justice  are  changing  and  this  change 
will  effect  poetry.  The  poet  who  sings  in  defense  of  the 
capitalist  or  our  economic  system  has  little  in  com- 
mon with  him  who  is  the  spokesman  of  the  common 
people. 

Poetry  springs  from  the  people  and  must  take  into 
consideration  their  emotions  in  connection  with  their  eco- 
nomic problems.  Very  little  of  the  poetry  of  the  past 
has  done  this.  Consider  the  literature  of  the  middle 
ages  and  note  how  seldom  the  troubles  of  the  serfs  and 
villains  were  expressed  by  the  poets.  There  were  slight 
efforts  made  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries, 
in  the  Romance  of  the  Rose  and  in  Langland's  Piers 
Plowman,  respectively,  to  give  some  expression  to  the 
feelings  of  the  masses. 

Modern  poetry  tends  to  deal  emotionally  with  social 
problems.  The  poet  who  calls  attention  to  the  suffering 
of  the  poor,  or  the  persecutions  of  reformers,  or  shows 
the  ills  in  family  life  brought  about  by  our  marriage 
system,  or  announces  a  social  message,  is  not  a  propa- 
gandist when  he  writes  something  that  evokes  our  emo- 
tions. When  Untermeyer  published  his  book  on  poetry 
he  was  much  criticized  for  the  prominence  he  gave  to 
James  Oppenheim  and  Arthur  Giovanitti,  who  are  ex- 
cellent poets.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  Untermeyer  did 
not  include  also  a  chapter  on  Horace  Traubel.  Unter- 
meyer may  insist  too  'much  on  the  social  mission  of 
poetry,  but  he  is  nearer  to  an  exalted  conception  of  poetry 
than  those  who  weld  words  to  metre  and  have  neither 
ideas  nor  substance  in  their  writing. 

Emerson  said,  "There  is  no  subject  that  does  not  be- 
long to  him  (the  poet), — politics,  economics,  manufac- 
tures and  stock  brokerage;  as  much  as  sunsets  and 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  159 

souls ;  only  these  things,  placed  in  their  order,  are  poetry ; 
displaced,  or  put  in  kitchen  order,  they  are  unpoetic." 

An  English  clergyman,  F.  W.  Robertson,  in  his  two 
lectures  on  the  "Influence  of  Poetry  on  the  Working 
Classes,"  delivered  in  1852,  and  posthumously  collected 
in  Lectures  and  Essays,  gave  vent  to  many  remarkable 
ideas  on  the  subject  of  poetry.  The  following  passage 
was  written  three  years  before  the  Leaves  of  Grass,  and 
sums  up  Whitman's  ideas,  and  is  worthy  of  quotation  to- 
day for  its  timeliness : 

The  Poetry  of  the  coming  age  must  come  from  the 
Working  Classes.  In  the  upper  ranks,  Poetry,  so  far  at 
least  as  it  represents  their  life,  has  long  been  worn  out, 
sickly  and  sentimental.  Its  manhood  is  effete.  Feudal 
aristocracy  with  its  associations,  the  castle  and  the  tourn- 
ament, has  passed  away.  Its  last  healthy  tones  came  from, 
the  harp  of  Scott.  Byron  sang  its  funeral  dirge.  But 
tenderness,  and  heroism,  and  endurance  still  want  their 
voice,  and  it  must  come  from  the  classes  whose  observa- 
tion is  at  first  hand,  and  who  speak  fresh  from  nature's 
heart.  What  has  poetry  to  do  with  our  Working 
Classes  ?  Men  of  work !  We  want  our  poetry  from  you 
— from  men  who  will  dare  to  live  a  brave  and  true 
life; 

It  does  not  follow  that  individualism  in  poetry  will  die 
out  and  that  ignorant  laborers  are  to  be  the  sole  heroes 
and  subjects  of  poetry.  The  intellectual  reader  will  still 
find  in  poetry  his  intellectual  heroes.  There  will  never 
be  equality  of  intellect,  and  hence  there  will  also  be 
something  of  an  intellectual  aristocracy  in  connection 
with  the  literature  and  poetry  of  democracy. 

The  note  of  ecstasy  as  a  passion  for  righteousness 
and  social  justice  is  of  a  high  order  usually.  It  was  this 
note  in  which  Greek  and  Roman  poetry,  however,  was 
deficient.  It  is  this  ecstasy  that  raises  the  prophetic  por- 
tions of  the  Bible  to  the  high  plane  they  occupy. 


160         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Professor  Butcher,  surely  one  in  sympathy  with  Greek 
art,  pointed  out  the  weakness  of  Greek  criticism,  in  that 
it  failed  to  consider  the  social  state  in  connection  with  the 
work  of  art.  This  state  of  criticism  was  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  poetry  of  the  Greeks  showed  no  deep  interest 
in  social  justice.  Pindar,  the  greatest  lyricist  of  the 
Greeks,  wrote  about  athletic  contests;  athletes  were  his 
heroes.  The  Greeks  glorified  healthy  bodies  in  their 
poetry,  an  exalted  feature  undoubtedly.  Homer  wrote 
about  wars,  and  Achilles  remained  the  type  of  Greek 
hero.  ^Eschylus  dwelt  on  the  laws  of  divine  retribution 
for  indulgence  in  crime.  Sophocles  contemplated  the 
irony  of  fate.  Sappho  recorded  her  love  troubles. 

The  only  exception  of  a  work  treating  of  poetry  in 
connection  with  social  justice  is  Plato's  Republic,  and  he 
concluded  that  the  poet  was  unnecessary.  Yet  he  him- 
self is  one  of  the  few  Greek  poets  who  showed  deep  in- 
terest in  social  justice. 

The  first  critic  who  pointed  out  the  connection  between 
poetry  and  social  conditions  was  the  author  of  On  the 
Sublime,  who  ends  his  treatise  with  a  beautiful  attack  on 
the  love  of  money  which  hinders  the  development  of  good 
art.  This  is  the  first  passage  in  pagan  antiquity  to  point 
out  the  evils  of  commercialism  in  connection  with  art. 

None  of  the  Greek  poets  (except  perhaps  Aristo- 
phanes) thought  it  worthy  of  their  art  to  cry  out  against 
the  social  abuses  of  the  time,  and  to  lament  the  existence 
of  wrong.  The  Roman  satires  alone  in  pagan  literature 
approached,  though  weakly,  the  ecstasy  for  social  justice 
in  the  prophecies  of  the  Bible.  The  prophecies  of  Isaiah 
and  Jeremiah  rank  higher  than  most  of  the  Greek  poems 
because  they  show  a  social  consciousness  steeped  in  emo- 
tion. Passages  like  these  are  Hebraic  and  not  Greek. 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  161 

"Woe  unto  them  that  join  house  to  house,  that  lay  field 
to  field,  till  there  be  no  place,  that  they  may  be  placed 
alone  in  the  midst  of  the  earth."  Isaiah  (Ch.  5,  v.  8). 
"They  are  waxen  fat,  they  shine:  yea,  they  overpass  the 
deeds  of  the  wicked :  they  judge  not  the  cause,  the  cause 
of  the  fatherless,  yet  they  prosper;  and  the  right  of  the 
needy  do  they  not  judge."  Jeremiah  (Ch.  5,  v.  28). 
"Take  away  from  me  the  noise  of  thy  songs;  for  I  will 
not  hear  the  melody  of  thy  viols.  But  let  judgment  run 
down  as  waters,  and  righteousness  as  a  mighty  stream." 
Amos  (Ch.  5,  v.  23-24). 

Fenelon  in  a  famous  passage  eloquently  proclaimed  the 
superiority  of  Hebrew  poetry  to  Greek  poetry.  Heine,  a 
pronounced  Hellenist,  came  to  the  final  conclusion  that 
the  Greeks  were  children  and  the  Hebrews  men. 

The  Hebrew  idea  of  righteousness  was  a  different  one 
from  the  later  Christian  notion  of  consciousness  of  sin. 
The  latter  was  really  a  perversion  of  the  former,  and 
ended  rather  in  social  injustices  as  the  history  of  the 
medieval  ages  shows. 

The  discussion  in  regard  to  the  merits  of  poetry  with 
a  mission,  or  poetry  that  is  purely  aesthetic,  was  revived 
on  the  occasion  of  the  publication  of  Untermeyer's  book 
The  New  Era  in  American  Poetry.  His  critics  made  the 
mistake  of  thinking  that  those  who  want  poetry  to 
deal  with  social  ideas  are  not  ready  to  recognize  poems 
that  are  beautiful,  or  convey  an  emotion,  even  if 
there  is  little  intellectual  content  behind  the  work.  There 
is  no  social  message  in  Poe's  Raven,  for  example,  but 
I  could  not  imagine  Untermeyer  not  being  moved  by 
that  poem,  for  it  digs  down  into  the  emotions;  it  was 
written  out  of  Poe's  tragic  life  and  finds  a  response  in 
us  all.  Untermeyer  has  not  been  tardy  in  his  apprecia- 


162         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

tion  of  poets  without  a  message  like  Frost  and  Robinson. 
In  fact  Untermeyer  ignores  quite  a  number  of  Revolu- 
tionary poets. 

The  reader  may  say  that  a  new  social  idea  in  poetry  is 
just  as  bad  as  an  old  moral  saw,  in  that  they  are  both 
didactic.  It  all  depends  on  the  ecstatic 'presentation, 
but  I  think  that  an  idea  that  is  advanced  and  unrecog- 
nized is  by  virtue  of  its  novelty  and  truth  more  capable 
of  swaying  the  emotion  that  we  call  poetic  than  the  repe- 
tition of  a  hackneyed  ethical  maxim  which  every  child 
knows  and  hears  usually  without  emotion.  Ibsen's  plays 
are  poetry  not  only  because  of  the  treatment,  but  be- 
cause of  the  ideas  there,  while  many  of  the  English 
eighteenth  century  moralists  in  verse  are  poets  neither  in 
treatment  nor  ideas. 

The  only  country  where  critics  have  had  almost  no  use 
for  the  theory  of  art  for  art's  sake  has  been  Russia. 
Here  they  have  also  had  no  such  compromising  views 
that  seek  to  know  only  whether  the  poet  has  done  his 
work  well,  and  whether  he  has  delivered  his  message  ir- 
respective of  its  value,  importance  or  truth.  The  Rus- 
sian critics  were  men  who  were  interested  in  the  connec- 
tion between  life  and  poetry,  and  never  failed  to  have 
their  eye  on  the  former  while  considering  the  latter. 
They  did  more,  they  had  their  eye  on  the  future,  and 
hence  were  usually  liberal.  We  know  very  little  about 
these  Russian  critics,  and  only  recently  has  the  nature  of 
their  work  been  outlined  by  Thomas  G.  Masaryk,  who 
before  the  war  published  The  Spirit  of  Russia  just  trans- 
lated into  English.  Previously  Kropotkin  and  a  few  his- 
torians of  Russian  literature  had  touched  on  their  work. 
Some  day  perhaps  we  may  be  so  fortunate  as  to  have 
translations  into  English  of  the  works  of  Bielinski, 
Tchernishevski,  Dobrolubov,  Pisarev  and  Mihailovsky. 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  163 

To  these  men  art  was  a  serious  thing,  and  they  would 
not  have  its  value  lost  in  metaphysical  theories  of 
aesthetics  about  beauty,  in  endless  discussions  about  the 
niceties  and  importance  of  metrical  forms.  Poetry  dealt 
with  social  problems  and  suggested  changes  in  society. 
Its  mission  was  to  deal  with  the  unbared  human  soul  and 
above  all  not  to  lie  and  affect. 

Every  one  has  conceived  the  function  of  poetry  as 
being  something  different,  usually  as  something  to 
spread  his  own  views.  Thus  the  theologian  looks  upon 
it  as  a  handmaid  of  religion,  to  show  the  beauty  of  a 
dogma  and  a  peculiar  view  of  life  in  accordance  with 
his  religion.  The  voluptuary  thinks  it  merely  a  means 
of  arousing  sexual  morality.  Some  philosophers  think 
it  a  vehicle  to  promulgate  their  own  systems.  Thus 
Nietzsche  believed  poetry  should  spread  the  gospel  of 
the  will  to  power,  while  Schopenhauer  thought  it  reached 
its  highest  point  when  it  glorified  the  denial  of  the  will 
to  live. 

The  world  can  never  be  fully  agreed  as  to  what  poetry 
is  any  more  than  it  can  agree  as  to  what  beauty,  truth,  or 
duty  is.  A  passage  may  appeal  to  one  person  and  not  to 
another.  It  all  depends  on  the  beliefs,  tastes,  experiences 
and  education  of  the  reader.  Patriotic  and  religious 
poetry,  whether  in  verse  or  prose,  falls  flat  on  the  inter- 
nationalist and  free  thinker  respectively,  because  they 
do  not  adore  the  sentiments  therein,  though  they  might 
admit  the  beauty  of  the  writing  and  recognize  the  ap- 
peal it  makes  to  those  who  are  in  accord  with  the  writer. 
They  cannot  be  responsive  to  the  soul  of  the  singer  be- 
cause they  are  differently  constituted  in  their  beliefs  and 
because  the  ideas  that  aroused  in  the  poet  one  train  of 
emotions,  move  them  to  a  contrary  passion. 

Let  us  take  a  hypothetical  case.    A  man  a  few  cen- 


164         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

turies  ago  was  sentenced  to  be  burned  at  the  stake  for 
his  religious  beliefs.  A  poet  who  approved  of  this  course 
wrote  a  poem  where  his  emotions  are  crystallized.  He 
was  sorry  for  the  victim  and  hoped  God  would  pardon 
him  and  make  him  see  the  error  of  his  ways.  He  praised 
the  executioner  who  himself  was  grieved  that  he  had  to 
take  this  course  to  save  the  infidel's  soul.  He  was  cer- 
tain that  God  was  pleased  with  the  sentence.  He  de- 
plored the  evil  effects  that  might  follow  if  this  man  were 
allowed  to  live  to  spread  his  infamous  doctrines,  he  re- 
buked the  man  for  the  trouble  he  brought  on  his  family. 
On  the  whole  he  gave  us  a  metrical  and  emotional  com- 
position actually  describing  his  sensations,  not  even  omit- 
ting sympathetic  reference  to  the  sufferings  of  the  vic- 
tim. This  was  poetry  to  those  thousands  that  day  who 
approved  of  this  act.  But  most  of  us  cannot  to-day  en- 
ter into  the  ecstasy  of  the  writer ;  it  is  not  poetry  to  us. 
But  while  people  to-day  are  not  burned  at  the  stake,  they 
are  persecuted  for  advancing  ideas  that  are  beyond 
the  public.  The  poets,  who  are  on  a  low  level  of  thought 
with  the  public,  in  writing  poems  against  such  individuals 
or  the  ideas  or  cause  represented  by  them,  are  not  poets 
to  those  who  support  the  persecuted  individual  or  his 
ideas.  Most  poets  still  write  in  defense  of  burning  at 
the  stake  of  great  humanitarians,  but  they  advocate  other 
measures  than  burning  by  real  fire. 

When  Ibsen  said  in  reply  to  the  critic  who  would  not 
allow  Peer  Gynt  to  be  called  poetry,  that  the  definition 
of  poetry  would  have  to  be  changed  to  take  in  his  poem, 
he  was  stating  a  condition  that  always  takes  place  when 
a  new  poetic  masterpiece  appears.  The  conception  as  to 
what  is  poetry  always  changes,  for  what  moves  man  in 
one  age  does  not  move  him  in  another.  The  poets  often 
have  to  do  what  Whitman  and  Wordsworth  did,  create 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  165 

the  tastes  by  which  they  are  to  be  enjoyed.  We  are  all 
aware  that  in  the  eighteenth  century  poetry  meant  some- 
thing entirely  different  from  what  we  believe  it  to  be 
to-day.  Many  men  were  considered  poets  then  whom 
we  do  not  regard  as  such.  The  same  is  true  of  poetry 
in  prose.  There  was  hostility  to  the  poetry  in  the  novels 
of  Balzac,  Flaubert  and  Zola,  because  the  public  did  not 
want  to  accept  their  artistic  innovations,  their  frankness 
and  their  views. 

Yeats  in  his  essay  "What  is  Popular  Poetry"  in  the 
Ideas  of  Good  and  Evil,  said  that  poetry  of  a  very  high 
order,  like  the  Epipsychidion,  is  not  popular  for  it  pre- 
supposes more  than  it  says.  All  good  poetry,  whether 
springing  from  a  written  or  an  unwritten  tradition,  is 
always  "strange  and  obscure,  and  unreal  to  all  who  have 
not  understanding,"  and  suggests  remembrance  of  im- 
possible things,  and  glimmers  with  thoughts  and  images 
dating  back  to  unknown  history. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  literature  or  poetry  which 
presupposes  some  culture,  and  a  sensitiveness  to  beauty, 
and  especially  a  highly  developed  intellect.  The  man  with 
the  commonplace  mind,  even  though  he  be  educated  and 
well  read,  is  often  unable  to  appreciate  the  beauty  of 
poetry  in  which  new  and  advanced  and  unpopular  ideas 
are  held  in  solution.  The  poetry  in  the  work  of  Whit- 
man and  Nietzsche  and  Ibsen  was  not  felt  by  people 
who  could  not  enter  into  the  spirit  of  their  revolt  from 
contemporary  morality.  The  public  cannot  appreciate  the 
prose  poetry  of  Hearn  because  of  his  rich  language  and 
aesthetic  sensitiveness. 

The  public  can  take  an  interest  in  the  beauty  and 
poetry  of  ideas  it  understands,  and  written  in  language 
that  it  speaks  and  in  images  that  it  uses ;  but  the  poet  is 
often  at  his  best  an  aristocrat  in  thought  and,  language, 


166         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

and  then  it  takes  a  well  trained  individual  reader  to  like 
him.  Poetry  is  no  longer  mere  folklore  or  ballads  or 
musical  numbers,  all  of  which  the  public  may  enjoy. 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  absolute  truth.  Truth  is  only 
a  relative  term.  When  a  man  speaks  of  the  truth  he 
means  those  doctrines  which  he  himself  embraces. 
Every  man  believes  that  the  views  that  he  entertains  are 
true,  otherwise  he  would  not  hold  them.  Many  people 
have  in  the  past  died  for  the  "truth,"  when  we  know 
that  they  upheld  falsehood. 

A  writer  who  is  liberally  inclined  will  hold  liberal 
ideas  to  be  the  truth ;  a  conservative  regards  only  con- 
servative views  as  true.  An  author  who  embraces  ideas 
from  both  the  conventional  and  radical  spheres,  con- 
siders only  those  books  as  true  whose  authors  do  the 
same  thing. 

In  a  sane  essay  on  DeVigny,  Mill  makes  a  remarkable 
distinction  between  the  conservative  and  radical  poet, 
concluding  that  the  greatest  poet  will  always  partake  of 
the  nature  of  both,  mentioning  as  example  Balzac  and 
De  Vigny.  Had  he  written  on  the  subject  a  half -cen- 
tury later  he  might  have  named  Ibsen,  whose  Brand  and 
Wild  Duck  are  good  conservative  poems.  Mill,  who  was 
no  disciple  of  art  for  art's  sake,  said  that  the  radical 
poet  will  paint  passionate  love,  "will  show  it  at  war  with 
the  forms  and  customs  of  society,  nay  even  with  its 
laws  and  religion,  if  the  laws  and  tenets  which  regulate 
that  branch  of  human  relations  are  among  those  which 
have  begun  to  be  murmured  against."  "To  him,  what- 
ever exists  will  appear  from  that  alone  fit  to  be  repre- 
sented :  to  probe  the  wounds  of  society  and  humanity  is 
part  of  his  business,  and  he  will  neither  shrink  from  ex- 
hibiting what  is  in  nature,  because  it  is  morally  culpable, 
nor  because  it  is  physically  revolting."  Here  Mill  an- 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  167 

ticipates  Zola,  Ibsen  and  Freud.  No  wonder  that  so  radi- 
cal a  critic  as  Brandes  was  attracted  to  him.  It  is  a  pity 
he  did  not  continue  literary  criticism. 

It  is  probably  vain  to  try  to  define  different  types  of 
poetic  or  literary  excellence,  but  we  may  state  some  of 
these.  Formerly  a  first-class  poet  was  one  who  suc- 
cessfully imitated  a  model  and  followed  certain  rules. 
Or  he  was  one  who  successfully  voiced  the  current  ac- 
cepted views  of  the  age.  It  is  these  reasons  that  still 
make  many  people  consider  Dante  and  Milton  among 
the  first-class  poets.  Again  there  is  a  tendency  to  re- 
gard as  poets  of  the  first  class  those  who  perfected  their 
art  technically.  Hence  ^schylus  and  Sophocles  are 
ranked  among  the  greatest  poets.  Sometimes  he  is  re- 
garded among  the  greatest  poets  because  he  is  among 
the  earliest,  like  Homer.  The  position  of  poets  like 
Shakespeare,  Moliere,  Cervantes  and  Goethe  as  first-class 
world  poets  and  writers,  cannot  be  contested,  because 
they  are  so  universal. 

Under  the  influence  of  Ibsen,  Shaw  in  his  preface  to 
a  new  edition  of  his  novel  The  Irrational  Knot  laid  down 
an  interesting  distinction  between  literature  of  the  first 
and  of  the  second  order.  The  distinction  applies  to 
poetry  as  well.  Shaw  considered  as  literature  of  the 
first  order  work  which  makes  a  distinct  original  contri- 
bution to  morality,  even  if  such  writing  is  literary  criti- 
tism.  He  regards  the  writers  who  accept  ready-made 
morality  as  of  the  second  order.  Shaw  admits  that 
writers  of  the  first  order  are  often  less  readable  and 
less  constructive  than  writers  of  the  second  order.  He 
mentions  among  writers  of  the  first  order,  Ibsen,  Eurip- 
ides, Byron,  Wilde  and  La  Rochefoucauld,  and  Shakes- 
peare in  Hamlet.  From  prefaces  in  other  books  of  his 
we  know  he  would  include  men  like  Blake,  Shelley, 


168         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Nietsche,  and  Butler.  As  writers  of  the  second  order 
he  mentions  Shakespeare,  Scott,  Dumas,  Dickens, 
Ruskin,  Carlyle,  and  he  would  no  doubt  include  writers 
like  Macaulay  and  Holmes.  He  does  not  mean  that  a 
writer  of  the  first  order  is  always  greater  than  one  of  the 
second  order,  but  he  does  insist  as  follows :  "No  man 
who  shuts  his  eyes  and  opens  his  mouth  when  religion 
and  morality  are  offered  to  him  on  a  long  spoon,  can 
share  the  same  Parnassian  bench  with  those  who  make 
an  original  contribution  to  religion  and  morality,  were  it 
only  a  criticism."  In  spite  of  the  contention  of  the  art 
for  art's  sake  school  that  poetry  has  nothing  to  do  with 
morality  or  religion,  the  greatest  poets  are  those  authors 
of  the  literature  of  ecstasy  who  championed  new  ideas, 
fought  for  liberty  in  their  works,  expressed  the  ad- 
vanced ideas  of  the  age,  and  gave  us  a  new  and  more 
liberal  outlook  on  life.  While  it  is  true  that  often  poets 
of  the  second  order  have  expressed  strongly  and  mov- 
ingly just  the  common  sentiments  of  everybody,  on  the 
whole  the  original  poets  rank  higher.  It  is  this  which 
puts  Whitman  above  Longfellow,  Nietzsche  above 
Macaulay,  Byron  and  Shelley  above  Tennyson  and  Ros- 
setti,  Ibsen  above  Scott.  Yet  there  are  many  poets  who 
made  no  distinct  original  contribution  to  a  new  morality, 
but  expressed  common  emotions  so  humanely  and  pow- 
erfully, that  we  think  of  them  as  poets  of  a  very  high 
order.  The  Dickens  of  the  Christmas  Carol  and  the 
Burns  of  the  love  songs  were  not  original  but  they  are 
great  nevertheless  by  the  infectious  depicting  of  uni- 
versal emotion,  which  is  always  of  highest  importance 
in  literature.  Though  there  is  nothing  new  in  a  novel  like 
Eugenie  Grandet  but  a  wonderful  description  of  a  miser, 
it  is  poetry  of  a  very  high  order,  for  an  account  of  a 
passion  in  an  intense  manner  is  great  poetry.  Most  of 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  169 

Hafiz's  poems  record  his  loves,  but  though  he  was  a 
liberal  and  against  the  asceticism  of  his  day,  he  was  in 
the  main  not  an  exponent  of  anything  new ;  nevertheless, 
he  is  a  poet  of  a  high  order. 

The  world  usually  does  not  recognize  the  original  poet 
and  accepts  a  poet  of  the  second  order  as  one  of  the 
first  order,  but  posterity  adjusts  the  matter.  Shelley  and 
Ibsen  finally  won  their  places  and  I  think  to-day  the 
growing  coldness  to  Scott  and  Tennyson  is  due  to  their 
lacking  in  great  original  ideas. 

We  need  not  agree  with  Shaw  when  he  says  that  Dick- 
ens, Ruskin  and  Carlyle  made  no  contributions  to  the 
morality  of  their  day.  The  humanitarian  reforms  sug- 
gested by  Dickens'  novels,  the  conceptions  about  sin- 
cerity in  history,  and  the  importance  of  individualism  and 
the  heroic  Carlyle  and  Ruskin's  views  in  art  criticism 
and  economics,  were  all  original.  They  all  had  in  addi- 
tion the  great  power  of  expression,  and  though  they 
were  not  always  very  profound  in  their  views,  they  are 
poets  of  a  high  order. 

A  poet,  then,  is  of  the  first  order  if  he  expresses  in 
prose  the  ecstasy  connected  with  a  great  original  idea  of 
social  justice  far  in  advance  of  his  age. 

There  is  an  opinion  ruling  among  academic  circles, 
also  derived  from  Aristotle,  that  poetry  is  the  highest 
form  of  literature,  and  that  a  verse  epic,  drama  or  lyric 
is,  when  at  its  best,  always  better  than  any  work  in  prose. 
Nothing  could  be  farther  from  the  truth.  Who  would 
say  that  great  novels  like  Don  Quixote,  great  plays  like 
Ibsen's,  great  essays  like  Montaigne's  are  not  superior 
as  literature  to  many  of  the  best  known  verse  productions. 
Nor  must  we  assume  that  the  literature  of  emotion  or 
ecstasy,  whether  in  prose  or  verse,  is  always  the  highest 
form  of  literature.  The  literature  that  shows  great  in- 


170         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

sight  into  character,  that  brims  most  with  intellectual 
ideas,  that  is  universal  and  human  in  interest  even  if  not 
emotional,  ranks  higher  than  poetry  which  voices  no 
ideas.  You  will  find  greater  literature  in  books  like 
Taine's  History  of  English  Literature,  or  Hazlitt's  es- 
says, even  in  those  passages  which  do  not  belong  to  the 
literature  of  ecstasy,  than  in  many  poems  of  James  Whit- 
comb  Riley  or  Longfellow.  The  two  latter  produced 
many  poems  that  belong  to  the  literature  of  emotion,  but 
while  they  are  genuine  poets,  they  are  intellectually  de- 
ficient. 

Aesthetics  and  criticism  have  tended  to  place  little 
aesthetic  value  on  the  literature  of  ideas.  A  passage 
from  Hume's  Essays  is  greater  as  literature  than  many 
verses  in  our  magazines.  Much  literature  consists  of  a 
succession  of  ideas  or  facts,  no  particular  one  of  which 
moves  us  to  ecstasy,  but  the  work  as  a  whole  does  have 
aesthetic  value  and  yet  is  not  poetry,  but  has  greater 
literary  value  than  some  poetry. 

Neither  verse  poetry,  nor  the  prose  literature  of 
ecstasy,  then,  is  the  highest  literature  necessarily. 
Shakespeare  was  one  of  the  greatest  poets,  not  only  be- 
cause he  depicted  emotions,  but  because  his  intellect,  his 
psychological  insight,  his  universality,  his  personality,  all 
combine  to  make  him  the  great  figure  he  is.  He  would 
have  continued  to  be  as  great  a  figure  even  if  he  had 
written  nothing  more  than  a  diary.  It  is  genius  that 
counts  and  not  the  form  one  uses.  To  say  that  the  drama 
or  epic  is  the  highest  literary  form  is  absurd ;  it  may  be 
the  essay,  if  a  genius  is  using  that  form. 

When  we  have  a  description  of  emotions,  we  have 
poetry  or  the  literature  of  ecstasy.  But  profound  thought 
may  give  a  work  more  enduring  qualities  than  ecstasy.  A 
love  song  by  Burns  is  wonderfully  sweet,  but  I  can  see 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  171 

no  reason  why,  because  it  is  poetry,  we  must  say  that 
it  is  a  greater  piece  of  literature  than  even  an  emotional 
prose  passage  out  of  Nietzsche  or  Carlyle  at  their  best. 
Goethe's  prose  essays  are  profound  and  are  often  greater 
as  literature  than  his  lyrics.  There  are  intellectual  pass- 
ages in  Wilhelm  Meister  that  are  superior  as  literature  to 
emotional  scenes  in  Faust  as  literature. 

Critics  like  Henry  Newbolt  are  supporting  the  view 
that  poetry  must  be  in  touch  with  life.  Though  he  clings 
to  the  idea  that  poetry  and  rhythm  go  together  he  thinks 
that  the  natural  tendency  of  poetic  rhythm  will  be  to- 
wards perpetual  change ;  the  value  of  his  book,  however, 
consists  especially  in  a  chapter  on  "Poetry  and  Politics." 
He  recognizes  that  both  reason  and  intuition  play  a  part 
in  poetry ;  men  are  not  divided  into  men  of  thought  and 
men  of  feeling,  the  one  speaking  the  language  of  science, 
the  other  that  of  poetry.  If  man  is  a  reasoning  animal, 
he  also  is  a  creature  of  instinct  as  well  as  of  thought. 
Hence  poetry  depends  on  science,  the  facts  of  which  be- 
come part  of  our  imagination.  The  poet  builds  a  more 
livable  world ;  he  may  write  great  political  poetry  if  he 
does  not  become  a  partisan.  Poetry  seeks  to  change 
human  feeling;  that  is  what  the  Prophets  did,  and  they 
were  in  a  sense  political  poets.  "Great  poetry,"  says 
Newbolt,  "is  the  poetry  which  has  the  power  to  stir  many 
men  and  stir  them  deeply,"  but  is  especially  great  when  it 
"is  the  expression  of  our  consciousness  of  this  world, 
tinged  with  man's  universal  longing  for  a  world  more 
perfect,  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire." 

Newbolt  finds  that  the  reason  so  much  religious  poetry 
is  futile  is  because  it  is  remote  from  earth.  But  he  finds 
in  the  Psalms  a  fervor  of  patriotism  and  moral  enthusi- 
asm that  he  compares  to  the  common  liturgical  poetry 
"as  a  great  and  sonorous  bell  to  the  vague  whistle  of  the 


i;2         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

wind."  They  preach  no  dogma,  they  are  remote  from 
practical  politics,  they  are  rooted  in  human  emotions,  and 
are  the  product  of  no  particular  church.  That  is  why 
they  always  move. 

Incidentally  one  may  add  that  is  why  the  great  medie- 
val Hebrew  poets  like  Solomon  Ibn  Gebirol,  Jehudah  Ha 
Levi  and  Moses  Ibn  Ezra,  are  great  poets.* 

Heine  in  his  poem  on  Jehuda  Ben  Halevi  deplores  the 
fact  that  these  three  poets  are  not  well  known  to  Aryan 
peoples.  In  fact  the  liturgical  poetry  of  the  medieval 
Hebrew  poets  is  non-sectarian  and  can  be  appreciated  by 
any  lover  of  the  literature  of  ecstasy.  Any  reader  of 
poetry  may  be  moved  by  Jehudah  Ha  Levi's  Ode  to  Zion, 
or  Bachya  Ibn  Pakuda's  My  Soul.  There  are  able  prose 
translations  of  these  in  B.  Halper's  Post-Biblical  Hebrew 
Literature.  An  Anthology,  Vol.  II. 

Any  one  who  reads  the  history  of  the  poetry  of  a 
country,  that  is,  of  the  poetry  in  verse,  will  find  much 
to  amuse  him  in  the  alleged  progress  made  in  the  conven- 
tions of  poetry.  One  poet  dethrones  another  and  the 
reader  gets  the  impression  that  the  later  poet  is  always 
superior  to  the  earlier  one  because  he  has  destroyed  con- 
vention, and  introduced  what  is  often  a  minor  change. 
The  eighteenth  century  rated  Chaucer  and  Spenser  rather 
low,  the  nineteenth  century  killed  off  Dryden  and  Pope, 
Tennyson  and  Browning  were  assumed  to  have  advanced 
upon  Byron  and  Shelley,  and  the  mid- Victorians  in  turn 
were  deemed  to  have  been  supplanted  by  the  poets  of 
"the  nineties."  Though  a  later  age  may  make  some  tech- 
nical improvements  in  the  art  of  writing  poetry,  it  is 
genius  that  counts.  Many  problems  about  poetry  have 

*The  greatest  authority  in  America  on  medieval  Hebrew 
poetry  is  Prof.  Israel  Davidson  of  the  Jewish  Theological 
Seminary,  New  York  City. 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  173 

disturbed  critics  since  Byron  died,  but  none  of  the  suc- 
ceeding generations  have  been  able  to  detract  from  the 
quality  of  poets  like  Burns,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge, 
Byron,  Shelley  and  Keats.  For  a  poet  is  such  by  virtue 
of  his  ability  to  convey  great  emotion  and  thought,  and 
he  does  not  become  obsolete  solely  by  the  technical  inno- 
vations of  a  later  age. 

Many  poets  are  praised  for  the  "note  of  revolt"  in 
their  poetry,  because  they  have  brought  about  some 
changes  in  the  technical  art  of  writing  poetry,  or  have 
written  their  poetry  in  a  manner  different  from  the 
ancients  only  in  form.  But  let  us  never  lose  sight  of  the 
fact  that  these  changes  which  are  considered  tokens  of 
great  courage  on  the  part  of  the  innovators,  amount  to 
very  little  when  these  so-called  audacious  poets  remain 
on  an  intellectual  and  moral  level  with  the  masses  and 
do  not  rise  as  high  as  the  older  poet  whose  vision  soared 
ahead  of  his  time. 

A  poet  may  be  great  even  though  he  uses  the  old  ma- 
chinery of  the  supernatural,  even  though  he  indulges  in 
artificial  diction,  cliches  and  stereotyped  metres,  for  what 
counts  in  poetry  is  the  greatness  and  power  of  a  human 
soul  and  personality,  the  ecstatic  presentation  of  an  ad- 
vanced point  of  view,  his  share  as  a  battler  for  truth, 
freedom  and  justice,  the  intensity  and  importance  of  his 
emotion.  People  are  under  the  impression  that  all  the 
martyrs  for  human  liberty  perished  in  the  medieval 
ages ;  that  the  world  has  been  set  free  by  those  who  gave 
up  their  lives  to  liberate  humanity  from  kings  and  priests, 
and  that  there  is  no  more  work  to  be  done  by  poets  to- 
day in  championing  human  liberty.  Critics  who  admire 
Milton  and  Shelley  as  champions  of  liberty  attack  to- 
day's unpopular  champions  of  it.  It  amuses  one  to  read 
of  the  epithets,  revolutionary  and  radical,  applied  to  versi- 


174         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

fiers  because  they  have  arranged  a  system  of  vowel- 
sounds  combination  in  their  poems,  or  imported  a  metre, 
or  broken  with  an  old  conventional  metre,  while  the  sub- 
stance of  their  poetry  remains  far  below  the  intellectual 
and  aesthetic  level  of  poets  who  lived  many  centuries 
ago. 

But  what  greater  poetry  has  been  produced  in  the  last 
two  generations,  than  many  of  the  novels  and  prose 
dramas  written  in  Russia,  Germany,  France,  Italy,  Eng- 
land and  Scandinavia?  Why  is  there  greatness  in 
the  poetry  in  these  works?  Is  it  not  because  of  the 
character  drawing,  the  delineation  of  great  emotional 
conflicts,  of  the  ecstasy  bathing  the  ideas  ?  Would  these 
poets  have  been  any  the  less  great,  had  they  continued 
to  use  the  same  ideas,  emotions  and  situations,  tricked 
out  even  in  the  old  conventional  forms  of  rhyme,  metre, 
tropes,  allegories,  high  personages,  supernatural  agen- 
cies ?  In  fact  plays  like  Peer  Gynt  and  The  Sunken  Bell 
are  rather  technically  conventional  as  verse  plays,  but 
could  any  one  compare  with  them  the  vapid,  senseless 
and  trite  lyrics  created  by  some  of  our  so-called  modern 
"revolutionary"  poets?  The  great  poet  who  deals  with 
the  capabilities  of  man  in  experiencing  emotion,  and  fears 
not  to  track  the  human  soul,  even  into  morbid  feelings, 
who  has  the  courage  to  challenge  society  with  ideas,  even 
though  these  arouse  the  most  bitter  antagonism  of  some 
of  the  leaders  of  society,  is  the  man  whom  posterity 
will  most  enjoy,  for  he  is  most  human  and  bold  and  he 
never  loses  sight  of  the  fact  that  he  deals  with  real 
ecstasy,  and  not  with  the  cultivated  nuances  of  some 
cliques  of  versifiers. 

If  the  reader  will  make  a  close  study  of  many  of  the 
revolutions  in  writing  poetry,  he  will  find  that  the  great 
change  often  amounted  to  nothing  more  than  the  substitu- 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  175 

tion  or  creation  of  a  new  rhythm  or  trope  for  the  one  used 
by  the  old  poet ;  such  changes  are  of  minor  importance. 
No  doubt  our  contemporary  poets  have  done  away  with 
many  conventions.  They  no  longer  employ  inversions 
of  words  and  phrases,  nor  cultivate  the  stock  poetical 
terms  and  words  allowed  formerly  as  a  matter  of  poetic 
license.  They  no  longer  tolerate  cliches  such  as  whenas, 
o'er,  whatime,  dost,  'mongst,  anon,  ere,  morn,  even,  o'er, 
main,  taen,  athwart,  e'en,  forsooth,  alack,  oh  thou,  didst, 
hath,  perchance,  methinks,  steed,  gleeds,  prithee,  trow, 
'neath,  'gainst,  ween,  wist,  espy,  twixt.  But  it  took  them 
a  long  time  to  discover  what  the  prose  writers  always 
knew ;  namely,  that  distorted  speech  should  be  avoided  in 
literature.  But  the  avoidance  of  cliches  does  not  make 
a  poet. 

Some  of  our  so-called  modern  free  verse  poets  like  Amy 
Lowell  are  artificial  in  substance  and  manner,  labored  and 
uninspired,  dull  and  bookish,  and  lacking  in  human  inter- 
est, ecstasy  and  ideas.    Their  technique  may  be  different 
from  that  of  the  old  poets,  but  these  new  writers  often 
have  no  ideas,  reveal  no  poetic  personality,  and  convey  no 
emotion.     Many  of  them  are  afraid  of  being  personal, 
and  as  a  result  they  fall  below  even  the  old  New  England 
poets  whom  they  despise.    A  poet  like  Longfellow  may 
be   deficient  in  intellectual   power  and   sympathy  with 
liberal  and  democratic  ideas,  but  when  he  tells  a  tale  of 
such    human    interest    as    Evangeline,    presents    an   idea 
against  war  as  in  The  Arsenal  at  Springfield,  or  draws 
on  his  personal  life  in  such  fine  lyrics  as  My  Lost  Youth, 
The  Bridge,  The  Day  is  Done,  he  moves  us  and  we  know 
we  are  reading  poetry,  though  it  has  not  the  emancipat- 
ing and  stimulating  effect  of  some  of  the  work  of  Walt 
Whitman     Lafcadio  Hearn,  by  the  way,  condemned  the 
tendency  to  depreciate  Longfellow. 


176         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Many  of  our  free  verse  writers  produce  no  great 
poetry,  even  though  they  write  in  a  medium  that  is  the 
proper  language  of  poetry.  The  opponents  of  the  free 
verse  writers,  who  see  no  merit  in  many  of  the  latter's 
productions,  are  often  right;  these  productions  are  not 
poetry  because  they  lack  ecstasy  and  ideas.  Much  of  the 
work  in  the  old  forms  produced  to-day  has  more  ecstasy, 
and  hence  it  is  poetry. 

Determination  of  the  merits  of  the  poets  of  eminence 
to-day  is  outside  the  scope  of  this  volume. 

There  has  been  much  comment  about  the  fact  that  we 
need  and  indeed  are  getting  an  American  or  national 
poetry.  Now  one  of  the  things  that  Whitman  has  over- 
done was  this  demand  for  poetry  that  is  distinctly  Ameri- 
can. Poetry  appeals  to  the  universal  element  in  man 
first.  A  great  idea  like  a  passage  in  the  Song  of  Myself 
could  have  been  written  by  and  can  be  appreciated  by 
the  people  of  another  nation.  A  cry  of  sympathy  for  the 
sufferings  of  animals  and  man  such  as  you  find  in  Out  of 
the  Cradle  Endlessly  Rocking  is  not  an  American  but  a 
human  note. 

You  can  translate  a  love  poem  from  the  Greek,  Latin, 
German,  French  or  Italian  into  English  prose,  and  if  you 
remove  the  proper  names  or  other  unessential  adjuncts, 
no  expert  or  scholar  will  be  able  to  tell  what  nationality 
the  poem  represents.  No  one  has  better  shown  the  hol- 
lowness  of  the  claimants  for  nationalism  than  James 
Russell  Lowell  in  two  essays  on  nationality  in  literature, 
one  written  in  sympathetic  review  of  Longfellow's  Ka- 
vanagh  and  collected  in  The  Round  Table,  and  another  in 
review  of  Piatt's  poems,  collected  in  The  Function  of  the 
Poet. 

Goethe,  before  Lowell,  ridiculed  the  idea  of  purely 
national  poetry.  True,  there  are  national  traits  and  char- 


ECSTASY  OF  SOCIAL  IDEALS  177 

acteristics,  modes  of  thought  and  feeling  peculiar  to  dif- 
ferent peoples,  that  enter  into  and  distinguish  every  lit- 
erature, but  these  do  not  usually  make  one  literature  so 
national  as  to  be  incomprehensible  to  other  nations. 
When  this  does  happen,  the  product  has  no  universal 
appeal  and  hence  is  not  great  poetry.  Again  poetry  may 
have  local  color ;  it  may  be  steeped  in  national  traditions, 
it  may  express  a  racial  philosophy  but  it  is  then  of  value 
only  in  so  far  as  it  represents  the  mode  of  thinking  and 
feeling  of  the  rest  of  mankind.  Poetry  may  be  rooted  in 
the  soil,  be  an  indigenous  product,  depict  native  customs 
or  a  provincial  life ;  it  may  depict  certain  types  of  heroes, 
and  glory  in  the  country  of  its  birth,  and  describe  its 
richness,  but  all  these  features  are  incidentals.  Human 
nature  is  much  the  same  the  world  over.  Feeling  is  uni- 
versal, though  it  may  be  colored  by  national  traits,  though 
one  nation  may  feel  more  keenly,  or  indulge  a  certain 
emotion  more  frequently  than  others.  The  heart  and  the 
head,  the  emotions  and  the  mind,  rule  in  writing.  The 
Old  Testament  and  Shakespeare  are  no  longer  national 
products  for  they  speak  to  the  whole  world.  They  have 
the  local  color  and  the  ideas  of  their  time  and  depict  a 
certain  phase  of  life,  but  we  all  feel  in  reading  these 
books  that  they  are  written  about  ourselves  and  to  our- 
selves. "We  have  spoken  too  much  about  nationalist 
art,  forgetting  that  though  the  roots  may  lie  in  nationality 
and  personality,  the  results,  independent  of  school  and 
nation,  should  overleap  boundaries  and  enter  the  universal 
heart."  (Isaac  Goldberg,  Studies  in  Spanish-American 
Literature. ) 

Poetry  then  grows  out  of  the  soil,  but  like  imported 
fruit  tastes  as  well  to  the  man  a  thousand  miles  away 
as  to  the  native. 

The  literature  of  a  country  however  should  be  indi- 


178         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

vidualistic,  not  imitative.  Whitman  is  an  American  poet 
in  the  sense  of  recording  his  own  individually,  while 
Lowell  is  a  transplanted  Englishman.  It  is  only  a  Whit- 
man rather  than  a  Lowell  who  could  have  written  the  fol- 
lowing passages,  which  appear  in  the  famous  Preface  to 
the  first  edition  of  Leaves  of  Grass. 

In  the  make  of  the  great  masters  the  idea  of  political 
liberty  is  indispensable.  Liberty  takes  the  adherence  of 
heroes  wherever  man  and  woman  exist — but  never  takes 
any  adherence  or  welcome  from  the  rest  more  than  from 
poets.  They  are  the  voice  and  exposition  of  liberty.  They 
out  of  the  ages  are  worthy  the  grand  idea — to  them  it  is 
confided,  and  they  must  sustain  it.  Nothing  has  prece- 
dence of  it,  and  nothing  can  warp  or  degrade  it. 

I  do  not  mean  that  the  author  of  that  bold  poem  in  the 
first  Bigelow  Paper,  against  the  recruiting  sergeant,  and 
of  the  lecture  on  Democracy,  was  not,  in  spite  of  his  dis- 
like of  Whitman,  in  accord  with  the  above  quoted  pas- 
sage. Nor  do  I  mean  that  he  could  not  have  learned  to 
write  a  passage  like  that  from  the  nation  which  gave  us 
such  fine  prose  poems  in  defence  of  liberty  as  Milton's 
Areopagitica,  Locke's  Letters  on  Toleration,  Jeremy  Tay- 
lor's Discourse  of  the  Liberty  of  Prophesying,  Mill's  Lib- 
erty and  Morley's  Compromise.  But  Whitman  was  the 
first  American  poet  who  taking  his  cue  from  American 
political  documents  embodied  in  his  poetry  views  of  po- 
litical and  individual  liberty,  as  the  fruit  of  democracy. 
Even  Whitman  stopped  short  of  championing  economic 
liberty.  Some  of  his  present-day  disciples  do  champion 
it.  But  Whitman's  plea  for  liberty  does  not  make  him  a 
national  poet,  for  European  poets  have  also  sung  of 
liberty. 


CHAPTER  X 

LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY  EMANATES  FROM  THE 
UNCONSCIOUS 

ARISTOTLE'S  best  known  contribution  to  literary  criti- 
cism is  his  statement  that  tragedy  has  the  effect  of  a 
catharsis  upon  the  reader  and  helps  him  to  discharge  emo- 
tions of  pity  and  fear  that  overburden  him.  We  have  con- 
siderably amplified  Aristotle's  views,  as  we  include  under 
tragedy  the  recording  of  any  very  painful  event  in  prose 
or  verse,  in  dialogue  or  narrative.  We  believe  that  perus- 
ing literature  in  general  relieves  the  reader  of  all  nerve- 
racking  emotions  and  produces  a  homeopathic  effect  'upon 
him  by  the  aesthetic  voicing  of  his  unconscious  feelings. 

Professor  J.  E.  Spingarn's  book,  Literary  Criticism  in 
the  Renaissance,  gives  us  a  good  survey  of  several  Italian 
commentators  who  correctly  interpreted  Aristotle's  view 
of  the  purgation  of  the  emotions  of  fear  and  pity  as 
aesthetic,  and  not  ethical.  'The  first  of  these  critics  was 
Robortelli  (1548)  ;  Vettori  and  Castelvetro  followed  him, 
while  Maggi  and  Varchi  applied  the  purgation  to  all  emo- 
tions similar  to  pity  and  fear,  a  more  Freudian  conception. 
Minturno  likened  the  purgation  to  the  physician's  method, 
while  Speroni  pointed  out  that  pity  and  fear,  holding  men 
in  bondage,  were  properly  to  be  expurgated.  These  men 
anticipated  the  great  work  of  Bernays  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  who  destroyed  the  centuries-old  fallacy  that 
Aristotle  had  in  mind  the  moral  purification  and  reforma- 
tion of  the  reader.  Even  Lessing  erroneously  thought 
that  this  was  Aristotle's  meaning. 

179 


i8o         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Moreover,  Milton,  who  had  traveled  in  Italy,  must  have 
read  these  Italians  when  he  gave  us  his  correct  interpreta- 
tion of  the  passage  in  the  preface  to  Samson  Agonistes. 
Milton  properly  understood  Aristotle's  meaning  of  the 
function  of  tragedy.  It  was  to  "temper  and  reduce  them 
(the  passions)  to  just  measure  with  a  kind  of  delight, 
stirred  up  by  reading  or  seeing  those  passions  well  imi- 
tated." 

We  know  now  the  true  interpretation  of  Aristotle's 
view  of  the  function  of  tragedy  from  a  passage  in  his 
Politics.  He  was  thinking  of  the  relief  the  spectators' 
surcharged  emotions  obtained  by  witnessing  similar  emo- 
tions expressed.  His  real  meaning  was  perceived  by  Henri 
Weil  and  Jacob  Bernays,  two  great  Jewish  classical 
scholars  of  Germany.  Bernays  states  moreover  in  his 
work,*  first  published  in  1857, 'that  any  literary  work  tell- 
ing of  unhappy  events  has  a  homeopathic  effect  on  the 
reader.  This  is  true,  for  even  if  we  do  not  actually  suffer, 
the  capacity  and  possibility  of  suffering  are  latent  within 
us.  Though  Bosanquet,  commenting  on  Bernays  in  his 
History  of  Aesthetics,  believes  tragedy  or  poetry  must  be 
written  in  verse,  he  is  forced  to  admit  that  even  Vanity 
Fair  and  Cousin  Bette  would  come  within  the  definition  of 
tragedy  developed  by  Bernays;  for  the  reader  finds  his 
own  emotions  expressed  in  these  works  no  less  than  in 
Sophocles  and  obtains  relief  when  he  reads  them.  Bosan- 
quet further  admits  that  any  serious  and  even  formless 
portrayal  of  life  may  be  placed  within  Bernays's  theory 
adding,  "It  may  indeed  be  admitted  to  be  a  development 
inherent  in  Aristotle's  theory." 

Aristotle  perceived  that  the  spectator  of  tragedy  was 
putting  himself  in  the  place  of  the  characters,  living  their 
lives  emotionally  and  sympathizing  with  them.  Since  the 

*  Zwfi  Abfandlungen  uber  d.  Aristotleische  Theorie  d.  Drama. 


EMANATES  FROM  THE  UNCONSCIOUS  181 

novel  or  lyric  poem  depicts  human  sorrow,  and  the  reader 
is  purged  by  reading  these  literary  forms,  just  like  the 
spectator  of  tragedy,  all  literature  has  the  effect  of  an 
aesthetic  catharsis  upon  the  reader. 

The  novels  of  Thackeray  and  Balzac  are  poetry  in  parts 
and  the  emotional  influence  in  reading  them  is  the  same  as 
in  seeing  a  tragic  verse-play  acted.  Bosanquet,  however, 
does  not  fully  accept  Aristotle's  theory  as  applied  to  tragic 
stories  in  prose  because  he  regards  poetical  prose  rhetoric 
and  not  poetry.  Would  he  exclude  from  the  domain  of 
tragedy  the  entire  episode  in  Hardy's  Return  of  the 
Native,  of  the  death  of  Eustace's  mother?  Hardy's 
tragedy  is  as  real  as  the  tragedies  of  the  Greek  play- 
wrights. The  novel  fulfills  all  the  requirements  of  poetic 
tragedy  in  that  the  reader  is  purged  and  relieved  of  pity 
and  fear  and  kindred  emotions.  For  tragedy  is  not  to  be 
found  only  in  dialogues  in  verse,  but  in  narration  and 
dialogue  in  prose,  and  its  function  is  to  relieve  us  of  any 
choking  emotion,  besides  fear  and  pity. 

Aristotle  is  the  founder  then  of  psychoanalytic  interpre- 
tation of  literature  and  is  a  forerunner  of  Freud.  He 
however  refers  only  to  the  catharsis  upon  the  spectator, 
but  not  to  that  of  the  author's  work  upon  himself. 

Every  creator  of  tragedy  in  prose  or  verse,  in  fiction, 
essay  or  lyric  was  first  subject  to  repression  and  then  ecs- 
tasy. We  may  say  as  Nietzsche  did,  that  tragic  art  is  the 
reconciliation  of  Apollo  and  Dionysius,  of  dreaming  and 
emotional  intoxication,  and  both  these  conditions  are,  in 
Freud's  words,  due  to  repression. 

But  we  have  travelled  far  beyond  Aristotle  in  our  views 
of  tragedy.  Freud  has  revolutionized  the  art  of  criticism 
and  a  disciple  of  his,  F.  Wittels,  in  the  Tragische  Motiv, 
gave  us  an  interpretation  from  the  psychoanalytic  point  of 
view  of  the  nature  and  sufferings  of  tragic  characters. 


182         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

There  is  an  abstract  of  the  book  by  Dr.  J.  S.  VanTeslaar  in 
the  American  Journal  of  Psychology  for  April,  1912. 
Wittels  shows  that  the  unconscious  unethical  desires  break 
into  consciousness  and  cause  tragedy.  He  points  out  that 
the  Greeks  were  purified  of  pent  up  emotions  in  the  thea- 
ter, and  that  they  identified  the  demons  of  their  inner  self 
in  the  actors.  He  also  says  that  the  Greek  drama  cannot 
any  longer  talk  as  clearly  to  us  as  of  old,  for  with  our 
civilization  we  have  wandered  away  from  the  naive  Greek 
mind.  The  author  emphasizes  the  fact  that  unconscious 
causes  make  the  writer  compose  his  work,  as  well  as  the 
fact  that  characters  in  history  and  literature  acted  from 
unconscious  causes.  Thus  suppressed  erotic  impulses  in- 
fluenced the  patriotism  of  Joan  of  Arc. 

At  all  times,  again,  it  was  vaguely  understood  that 
dreams  reveal  the  unconscious,  that  poetry  emanates  from 
the  dream  state,  that  in  fact  poems  are  even  composed  in 
dreams.  Thus,  the  Bible  itself  is  authority  for  the  fact 
that  all  the  prophets  received  their  messages  in  a  dream  or 
vision.  The  Hebrew  sages  said  that  the  dream  was  a 
fraction  of  prophecy,  the  unripe  fruit  of  prophecy. 

One  of  the  first  -critics  who  treated  at  length  the 
question  whether  poetry  may  actually  be  composed  in 
dreams  is  the  Hebrew  poet  and  critic  Moses  Ibn  Ezra,  who 
lived  in  Spain  in  the  early  part  of  the  twelfth  century. 
The  seventh  chapter  of  his  Conversations  and  Recollec- 
tions *  deals  with  the  subject.  He  was  influenced  by 
Arabs  who  were  absorbingly  concerned  with  the  interpreta- 
tion of  dreams.  Ibn  Ezra  thought  that  it  was  just  in  the 
sleeping  state  that  the  use  of  thought  and  imagination  was 

*  This  work  has  never  been  completely  published.  Dr.  B.  Hal- 
per,  of  Dropsie  College,  Philadelphia,  has  promised  us  a  com- 
plete translation  from  the  Arabic  manuscript.  There  is  a  syn- 
opsis of  it  by  Schreiner  in  the  Revue  des  Etudes,  Juives  XXI, 
XXII. 


EMANATES  FROM  THE  UNCONSCIOUS  183 

greatest,  for  then  the  soul  loses  consciousness  of  things, 
the  body  and  senses  are  at  rest  and  only  the  common  sense, 
which  the  critic  uses  really  as  synonymous  with  the  un- 
conscious, is  active.  He  quotes  a  Hebrew  philosopher  to 
the  effect  that  the  soul,  when  detached  from  the  body,  has 
finer  perceptions  than  when  awake.  This  is  in  accord- 
ance with  Aristotle  who  said  that  the  soul  can  discover 
hidden  things  when  detached  from  the  senses,  when  it  is 
pure.  Ibn  Ezra  asserts  that  his  Hebrew  authority  main- 
tains that  one  may  compose  verses  in  sleep,  and  he  gives 
examples  of  his  own. 

Ibn  Ezra  believed  that  nightmares  have  some  idea  be- 
hind them,  that  an  interpreter  of  dreams  whose  reason  is 
superior  to  that  of  the  dreamer  can  discover  the  idea, 
for  dream  interpretation  is  the  science  of  hidden  things 
communicated  by  God.  The  poet  also  composes  verses  in 
dreams,  often  because  he  does  this  in  waking  life,  for  many 
people  carry  on  in  their  dreams  the  occupations  of  their 
daily  life.  We  all  recall  that  we  read  in  our  dreams,  es- 
pecially if  we  are  lovers  of  reading.  We  do  in  our  dreams 
what  we  would  like  to  do. 

The  Aristotelian  medieval  Hebrew  philosophers,  Isaac 
Israeli,  Abraham  Ibn  Daud,  Moses  Maimomides,  and  Levi 
ben  Gerson  also  developed  the  idea  of  the  connection  of 
prophecy  with  dreams.* 

We  know  to-day  that  the  poet  creates  a  congenial  sur- 
rounding for  himself  out  of  his  imagination.  He  is  re- 
pelled by  the  sordidness  of  his  environment  or  the  suffering 
he  has  had  in  life.  He  writes  a  poem  like  Epipsychidion, 
to  build  himself  a  home  where  he  has  ideal  love,  because 
he  is  not  satisfied  with  his  married  life.  He  writes  a  prose 
poem  like  Dream  Children  where  he  sees  himself  wedded 

*  See  Isaac  Husik's  Medieval  Jewish  Philosophy. 


184         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

to  his  lost  love,  with  their  children  about  him,  because  he 
is  a  bachelor  who  has  neither  love  nor  children. 

Poetry,  like  dreams,  creates  a  state  where  unfulfilled  un- 
conscious wishes  are  gratified.  Poetry  is  the  voice  then  of 
the  unconscious.  The  poem  is  usually  a  product  of  the 
day-dream,  which  is  related  to  the  dream  of  sleep,  for  both 
species  of  dreams  reveal  the  unconscious.  Poetry  shows 
conflicts  and  makes  adjustments  to  reality.  Poetry  is 
aesthetic  therapeutics.* 

The  dream  poems  of  literature  are  so  numerous  that 
one  is  amazed  that  the  theory  of  poetry  as  a  dream  has  not 
been  more  prominently  discussed  by  literary  critics.  In 
the  middle  ages  many  poems  were  cast  in  the  form  of 
dreams.  The  allegory  was  generally  a  dream.  Who  can 
doubt  that  the  Divine  Comedy  and  Pilgrim's  Progress, 
both  in  the  form  of  dreams,  were  attempts  by  the  poets  to 
adjust  themselves  to  reality,  to  purge  themselves  and  re- 
lieve their  unconscious  ? 

Even  those  poets  who  are  always  hiding  their  souls  and 
making  inlays  of  verbal  mosaic  reveal  themselves.  Their 
dabbling  with  trifles  is  indicative  of  an  inability  or  lack 
of  courage  to  think  and  feel.  They  thus  make  a  dis- 
closure more  marked  than  if  they  had  sung  their  private 
thoughts  openly. 

Poetry  is  a  psychological  art  rather  than  a  plastic  one. 
It  deals  with  the  soul.  Horace's  statement  that  if  the  poet 
would  make  the  reader  weep  he  must  weep  himself,  is  true. 
Yet  we  have  often  failed  to  recognize  that  poetry  is  a 
genuine  personal  cry  of  a  man  who  dreams.  We  have 
confused  poetry  with  prosody,  instead  of  identifying  it 
with  the  unconscious. 

The  poem  with  the  social  message,  the  problem  play  for 

*  F.  C.  Prescott's  Dreams  and  Poetry  is  a  magnificent  essay 
on  the  subject. 


EMANATES  FROM  THE  UNCONSCIOUS  185 

example,  or  the  novel  with  a  purpose,  also  belongs  to  the 
literature  of  dreams.  The  poet  sees  foul  infections  in- 
filtrating society;  he  has  often  himself  been  a  victim  of 
social  abuses.  He  voices  complaints  about  the  unjust 
system  and  its  tyrannical  sway.  He  shows  himself  and 
others  suffering  in  its  coils.  He  dreams  a  vision  of  a 
more  beautiful  and  just  system  of  society  where  neither 
he  nor  others  are  consumed  in  vexation.  He  states 
ecstatically  the  ideas  that  come  to  him  as  he  condemns; 
he  entertains  and  expresses  views  whose  adoption  would 
enable  man  to  reconstruct  society  on  a  better  plan. 

His  intellect  is  colored  by  his  inability  to  adjust  himself 
socially.  His  dreams  give  him  ideas.  He  does  not  have 
to  become  a  reformer,  but  he  recognizes  social  wrongs 
resulting  from  custom  or  stupidity  or  downright  wick- 
edness. Personal  repression  and  dreaming  produce  not 
only  love  poems,  but  poems  containing  Utopias  of  society, 
plans  for  improvement. 

I  have  fully  stated  in  my  The  Erotic  Motive  in  Litera- 
ture the  psychoanalytical  view  of  poetry  which  regards  it 
as  the  poet's  creation  of  a  world  in  accordance  with  his 
fancy  to  compensate  himself  for  his  repressions.  Thus  the 
poet  relieves  himself  of  emotions  that  were  bursting  within 
him  and  cures  himself  of  incipient  neurosis.  I  have  shown 
that  the  view  was  not  wholly  originated  by  Freud,  but 
stated  by  various  English  critics  like  Samuel  Johnson,  Haz- 
litt,  Lamb  and  Kingsley.  There  are  several  other  English- 
men who  held  the  view,  namely  Shakespeare  and  Bacon. 
Havelock  Ellis,  however,  was  the  first  writer  in  England  to 
develop  the  idea  that  artistic  creation  is  a  sublimation  of 
sex  repression.  (See  his  essay  on  Cananova  in  Affirma- 
tions, published  before  Freud's  book  on  dreams.) 

Poets  like  Burns,  Byron,  Shelley,  Wordsworth,  Tenny- 
son, Gothe  and  Ibsen  have  told  us  that  they  wrote  to  re- 


186         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

lieve  themselves  of  their  pent  up  passions.  Further,  Co'e- 
ridge,  Shelley,  Emerson,  Daudet,  Holmes,  Lowell,  Poe 
and  Hearn  have  left  us  written  evidence  of  their  belief 
that  poetry  emanates  from  the  unconscious.  It  remained, 
however,  for  Freud  to  have -the  courage  to  identify  the  un- 
conscious chiefly  with  sex  repression  and  symbolic  speech. 

The  first  English  poet  who  claimed  to  allow  his  uncon- 
scious self  deliberately  to  dictate  his  poems,  was  James 
John  Garth  Wilkinson.  Havelock  Ellis  has  recently  called 
attention  to  him.  In  his  Improvisations  from  the  Spirit 
(1857)  Wilkinson  wrote  down  in  rhymed  verse  the  first 
impressions  of  a  chosen  theme.  He  depended  chiefly  on 
inspiration.  His  book  was  praised  by  Dante  G.  Rossetti, 
and  forms  the  subject  of  an  essay  by  the  poet  James 
Thomson,  called  "A  Strange  Book"  in  Biographical  and 
Critical  Studies.  Emerson  had  also  praised  this  physician, 
who  was  an  authority  on  Blake  and  Swedenborg.  Wil- 
kinson claims  to  have  written  in  what  we  would  call  the 
Freudian  method  of  drawing  on  his  unconscious.  He 
considers  reason  and  will  secondary  powers  in  the  process. 
The  poems  resemble  Blake's  (even  in  their  obscurity). 
Thomson  rightly  distinguishes  Wilkinson  from  fraudulent 
spiritualists. 

Wilkinson's  poems,  however,  do  not  make  good  the 
claim  to  be  absolutely  unconscious  art.  If  he  had  not  told 
us  that  he  improvised  we  would  never  have  doubted  that 
these  poems  were  composed  like  all  other  poems,  with 
some  labor.  We  cannot  believe  that  Wilkinson  did  not 
have  to  seek  ryhmes.  He  may  have  taken  the  first  rhyme 
that  came  to  his  head  but  he  had  also  to  consider  his  metre. 
Again,  no  art  dispenses  altogether  with  the  poet's  use  of 
artistic  judgment,  no  matter  how  much  an  improvisation 
that  art  is.  I  do  not  believe  that  even  Coleridge's  famous 
Kubla  Khan  was  actually  composed  in  a  dream,  but  that 


EMANATES  FROM  THE  UNCONSCIOUS  187 

it  was  merely  suggested  by  a  dream.*  He  fashioned  the 
form  consciously,  that  is  the  rhyme  and  metre.  The  sub- 
stance of  the  poem  is,  however,  always  from  the  uncon- 
scious. Thomson  considers  Wilkinson's  belief  in  the 
divine  inspiration  of  his  poem  a  delusion.  Wilkinson's 
art  is  not  utterly  unconscious,  for  there  is  no  uncensored 
idea  therein,  which  is  bound  to  be  occasionally,  in  some 
dreams  out  of  many,  of  the  most  virtuous  man.  This 
commendable  feature  shows  Wilkinson  exercised  judg- 
ment, and  this  was  a  conscious  artistic  process. 

Improvisation  is  one  of  the  features  that  characterized 
Persian  and  Arabic  poetry.  It  is  easier  there  than  in 
English  because  of  the  facility  for  rhyme  in  these 
languages,  and  because  the  improvisers  usually  composed 
in  rhymed  prose  and  were  not  hampered  by  metre.  The 
test  of  the  great  poet  often  was  his  ability  to  compose  a 
poem  on  the  spur  of  the  moment.  Seemingly  fabulous, 
yet  apparently  true  stories  of  improvisation  feats  by 
Arabic  poets  are  numerous.  When  they  improvised  in 
different  metres,  the  Arabic  poets  in  competition  would 
compose  alternately  verse  by  verse  as  a  rule.  Sometimes 
the  poet  would  improvise  a  short  poem  on  the  basis  of  any 
opening  verse  given  to  him.  We  remember  the  story  of 
Harun  al  Rashid  who  recited  a  line  to  Abu  Nuwas  who 
composed  a  poem  for  him.  The  Arabian  Nights  is  full  of 
improvised  poems.  Arabic  critics  always  dealt-  with  im- 
provisation as  a  feature  of  verse  making,  and  this  is  an 
argument  to  those  who  maintain  that  Arabic  poetry  was 
conscious  art  and  artificial.  It  was  the  ecstasy  that  un- 
consciously incited  the  poet  to  utter  his  inner  thought. 

I  would  like,  however,  to  make  special  reference  to  two 
Englishmen,  John  Keble  and  E.  S.  Dallas,  both  now  very 

*  I  do  not  however  agree  with  Bergson,  who  does  not  believe 
poetry  can  be  composed  in  dreams  at  all. 


i88         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

little  read,  who  left  critical  works  expounding  poetry  from 
a  psychoanalytic  point  of  view.  Keble  was  Professor  of 
Poetry  at  Oxford,  and  the  author  of  a  most  widely  read 
Christian  poem.  He  delivered  lectures  on  poetry  in  the 
eighteen-thirties,  in  Latin.  These  were  published  in  1844 
under  the  title  of  De  Poeticae  vi  Medico.  They  were 
translated  into  English  for  the  first  time  a  few  years 
ago.  They  have  been  praised  by  Cardinal  Newman, 
Justice  Coleridge,  Gladstone  and  Saintsbury.  Dean 
Church  called  them  the  most  original  and  memorable 
lectures  on  poetry  that  had  ever  been  delivered  at  Oxford. 

Keble  defined  poetry  as  "a  kind  of  medicine  divinely 
bestowed  upon  man,  which  gives  healing  relief  to  secret 
mental  emotions,  and  yet  without  detriment  to  modest  re- 
serve, and  yet,  while  giving  scope  to  enthusiasm,  rules  it 
with  order  and  due  control."  He  traces  the  origin  of 
poetry  to  the  desire  for  personal  relief  of  pent  up  emo- 
tions in  the  individual  and  argues  that  this  is  the  natural 
conclusion  from  his  definition.  He  divided  poets  into  two 
classes — primary  and  secondary.  In  the  first  class  he  put 
those  who,  moved  by  impulse,  resort  to  composition  for 
relief  and  solace  of  a  hindered  or  overwrought  mind.  In 
the  second  class  he  put  imitators  of  the  first  and  all  others. 
He  had  been  meditating  over  these  views  for  some  time, 
and  they  also  appear  in  some  of  the  essays  which  were 
collected  after  his  death  under  the  title  of  Occasional 
Papers  and  Reviews.  In  fact,  in  one  of  these  essays  he 
used  the  Freudian  word  "repression,"  in  referring  to  the 
creation  of  poetry. 

Keble's  views  are  so  sound  and  clear  that  one  marvels 
they  were  not  taken  up  before  Freud.  It  is  true  one  will 
find  much  that  is  obsolete  in  his  lectures;  one  will  be 
amused  by  his  Toryism,  his  over-emphasis  on  the  religious 
side  of  poetry,  his  academic  and  classic  standards.  He 


EMANATES  FROM  THE  UNCONSCIOUS  189 

however  recognized  that  poetry  was  a  sublimation  of  the 
poet's  surcharged  emotions  and  that  the  poet  healed  him- 
self, therapeutically  treating  himself  by  writing.  He  was 
really  developing  at  length  Aristotle's  famous  definition 
of  tragedy  as  purging  the  audience  of  pity  and  fear. 
Aristotle  was  referring  however  to  the  aesthetic  purgation 
of  the  feelings  of  the  audience;  Keble,  like  Freud  later, 
had  in  mind  the  poet's  relief  to  himself.  Poetry  ministers 
however  to  the  overburdened  mind  both  of  the  poet  and  the 
reader.  Both  are  relieved  in  finding  expression  for  ideas 
and  emotions  that  are  troubling  them. 

It  was  no  doubt  Keble's  religious  nature  that  made 
him  perceive  this  important  fact.  He  noted  that  the 
psalmists  in  the  Bible  sang  to  relieve  themselves  of  their 
griefs  and  he  saw  that  prayer  had  a  psychoanalytic  effect 
on  people.  Poetry  is  then  the  emotional  expression  of  an 
overcharged  heart.  But  this  does  not  necessarily  mean 
overcharged  with  grief.  For  it  expresses  people  who  are 
overflowing  with  joy  or  any  emotion.  It  covers  what 
Nietzsche  called  ecstasy,  and  especially  the  ecstasy  of  love 
or  sexual  excitement.  It  covers  the  desire  for  beauty 
which,  as  Nietzsche  again  saw,  possessed  a  sexual  con- 
tagion in  it.  The  happy  poet  in  love  desires  to  give  vent 
to  his  emotions  by  some  form  of  expression,  whether  his 
love  is  satisfied  or  not.  And  those  who  seek  the  origin 
of  poetry  in  religion  must  remember  the  close  affiliations 
that  anthropologists  have  found  between  love  and  religion. 

Keble  perceived  that  the  greatness  of  poetry  lay  in  its 
genuineness  and  seriousness,  and  that  it  was  not  merely  a 
metrical  plaything.  He  perceived  that  it  revealed  the  poet 
himself  and  that  its  mission  was  high. 

One  must  also  admire  his  broadmindedness  in  treating 
Lucretius,  whom,  in  spite  of  his  atheistic  views,  Keble 
places  among  the  primary  poets.  The  modern  reader 


THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

might  resent  the  placing  of  Sophocles  and  Theocritus 
among  the  secondary  poets ;  nor  does  every  personal  poet 
belong  to  the  primary  class,  for  minor  poets  are  often 
personal.  Poets  must,  to  be  in  the  first  class,  voice  a  very 
compelling  emotion  based  on  a  very  profound  idea. 
Burns  and  Heine,  Shelley  and  Byron,  Goethe  and  Ibsen, 
Balzac  and  Tolstoy  are  primary  poets,  not  only  because 
they  are  personal  but  because  they  are  intellectual. 

Keble  anticipated  the  greatest  of  modern  theories  about 
the  nature  of  art,  poetry  and  literature.  He  saw  that  art 
was  not  play,  as  Schiller  and  Spenser  believed,  but  an 
expression  necessary  to  relieve  both  poet  and  reader.  Its 
origin  is  not  in  play  but  in  the  desire  to  heal  oneself  and 
create  a  reality  out  of  a  dream.  Poetry  is  an  attempt  to 
unburden  oneself  and  adjust  oneself  to  reality,  which 
it  does  by  complaint  or  by  building  a  dream  castle. 

But  its  sources  are  always  repressions  of  emotions, 
which  in  many  cases  have  become  unconscious.  The  best 
exposition  of  the  imagination  from  this  point  of  view  is 
by  E.  S.  Dallas,  who  published  The  Gay  Science,  in  two 
volumes,  in  1866.  He  was  a  successful  book  reviewer 
and  had  also  written  a  book  on  Poetics,  which  David  Mas- 
son  reviewed.  In  chapters  in  his  greater  book,  on  "The 
Imagination,"  "The  Hidden  Soul,"  "The  Play  of 
Thought"  and  "The  Secrecy  of  Art,"  he  anticipated  many 
of  the  modern  discoveries  of  art  in  connection  with  the 
unconscious.  He  saw  that  man  leads  a  hidden  inner  life 
of  which  he  is  unaware  and  that  this  life  appears  in  his 
art.  You  will  find  more  on  the  nature  of  imagination 
and  poetry  in  Dallas's  book  than  in  many  of  the  works  on 
taste  that  have  survived.  He  carried  Keble's  ideas  to 
much  further  conclusions  and  saw  that  man  unburdens 
not  only  his  conscious  emotions,  but  even  those  of  which 
he  is  unconscious. 


EMANATES  FROM  THE  UNCONSCIOUS  191 

Dallas's  four  chapters  at  the  end  of  his  first  volume 
form  one  of  the  most  striking  contributions  to  the  nature 
of  poetry  and  imagination  that  have  ever  been  penned  in 
English.  He  finds  imagination  but  another  name  for  the 
automatic  action  of  the  mind  or  any  of  its  faculties.  It 
is  unconscious  memory,  its  logic  is  the  logic  of  the  hidden 
soul,  it  is  passion  that  works  out  of  sight.  Imagination 
is  the  unconscious.  It  suggests  not  only  the  power  of 
figuring  to  ourselves  the  shows  of  sense,  but  also  that  of 
imagery  or  the  comparison  of  shows.  It  does  not  differ 
from  reason,  but  shows  the  process  of  reason  working 
automatically.  It  is  play  of  thought,  it  is  hidden  soul. 
It  combines  sensibility  to  images,  wandering  of  the  mind, 
and  finding  of  comparisons.  Its  function  is  not  different 
from  reason,  memory  or.  feeling,  but  its  peculiarity  is 
that  its  work  is  done  in  secret  automatically  or  uncon- 
sciously. Imagination  not  only  builds  images,  but  it 
creates  types,  it  utters  ideas,  it  speaks  a  natural  language, 
it  voices  emotions. 

Even  the  old  critic  who  separated  verse  poetry  from 
prose  literature  as  a  distinct  branch  of  writing  was  always 
suspicious  that  he  was  in  error,  for  he  knew  both  were  the 
products  of  creative  imagination.  Of  the  ancients,  it  was 
only  Aristotle  who,  defining  poetry  as  imitation,  saw  that 
he  must  include  prose  that  "imitated"  in  his  definition  of 
poetry.  The  thing  that  counted  was  the  imitation  or 
imagination  in  determining  poetry  and  not  metre. 

As  imagination  creates  the  literature  of  ecstasy,  the 
real  subject  of  this  book  has  been  the  function  of  the 
imagination,  but  as  the  term,  like  poetry,  has  been  so 
much  abused  and  misunderstood,  the  nature  of  them  both 
is  studied  by  using  other  terms,  like  "ecstasy"  and  the 
"unconscious." 

I  suppose  that  no  word  has  been  more  used  in  connec- 


192         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

tion  with  poetry  than  the  word  imagination.  And  prob- 
ably no  word  has  been  more  vaguely  and  diversely  em- 
ployed. Every  one  agrees  that  literature  in  general  must 
be  the  function  of  the  imagination.  Many  people  when 
they  speak  of  imagination  really  mean  nothing  more  than 
the  introduction  of  numerous  figures  of  speech;  others 
confuse  it  with  the  sportive  play  of  the  author  with  super- 
natural machinery  in  his  work.  To  others  imagination 
suggests  something  that  is  opposed  to  the  convictions  of 
the  intellect  and  to  the  moral  faculty.  Even  to-day 
many  people  do  not  know  that  Aristotle  used  the  term 
"imitation"  and  Bacon  the  word  "feigning"  where  we  use 
the  word  "imagination."  These  older  terms,  in  the  course 
of  evolution  in  meaning  which  words  undergo,  are  used 
by  us  no  longer  to  represent  poetic  creation,  or  imagina- 
tive work. 

Every  one  quotes  the  famous  lines  of  Shakespeare  in 
the  fifth  act  of  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  and  many 
fail  to  see  the  exact  meaning  of  the  master  who  had  a  true 
conception  of  the  function  of  his  art.  First  he  recognizes 
that  the  poet  is  "imagination  all  compact,"  and  compares 
him  to  the  lunatic  and  the  lover.  Next  he  uses  the  word 
frenzy  in  speaking  of  the  poet's  eye  which  rolls  about  and 
glances  over  the  universe,  showing  that  he  had  the  con- 
ception of  the  ecstatic  element  in  the  poet's  make-up  and 
work.  The  poet  gives  shape  to  the  forms  of  unknown 
things  bodied  forth  by  imagination,  he  gives  a  local  habita- 
tion and  a  name  to  airy  nothing.  Shakespeare  recognizes 
the  fact  that  imagination  is  related  to  the  dream  when  he 
says  that  one  of  the  tricks  of  imagination  is  that  if  it 
apprehends  a  joy,  it  comprehends  the  bringer  of  that  joy, 
that  is,  it  builds  a  dream  castle  where  that  joy  is  realized. 
His  use  of  the  words  "unknown  things"  in  addition,  as 
the  substance  of  imagination,  shows  that  he  understood 


EMANATES  FROM  THE  UNCONSCIOUS  193 

that  the  realm  of  the  unconscious  was  the  province  of 
the  imagination.  Hazlitt  and  Lowell  among  modern  critics 
correctly  understood  Shakespeare's  meaning  of  imagina- 
tion as  identical  with  ecstasy.* 

People  to-day  give  vent  to  their  emotions  in  prose  con- 
versation or  in  writing  prose  letters  to  friends  or  relatives. 
Here  we  have  the  process  that  led  to  the  creation  of  poetry 
in  earliest  times.  Poetry  is  the  result  of  ecstasy,  the  out- 
pouring of  the  imagination,  the  expression  of  the  uncon- 
scious. If  instead  of  having  confused  it  with  song  and 
dancing  the  critics  would  have  taken  it  in  its  real  signifi- 
cance as  excited  speech,  we  would  have  had  less  misunder- 
standing about  its  nature.  The  lover  of  to-day  who  tells 
his  emotions  to  his  love,  or  confides  them  to  a  friend,  the 
bereaved  person  who  relates  his  grief  at  the  death  of  a 
loved  one  and  tells  of  the  virtues  of  the  departed,  are  rude 
poets  expressing  themselves  in  conversation  in  prose. 
When  they  take  the  pen  in  hand  and  write  a  letter  or  keep 
a  diary,  they  become  poets  no  less  than  the  versifier  who 
puts  his  feelings  down  in  patterned  speech. 

The  greatness  of  the  letter  or  diary  as  a  poem  depends 
not  only  on  the  craftsmanship,  but  on  the  substance,  on 
the  vividness  or  beauty  or  power  with  which  the  emotion 
is  depicted,  on  the  degree  of  its  capability  of  moving 
others,  and  on  the  depth  of  the  ideas  therein.  Similarly, 
the  person  who  is  moved  to  prayer  spontaneously  by  some 
religious  experience  or  private  passion  and  utters  his  words 
in  a  natural  manner  or  reduces  them  to  writing,  is  creating 
poetry.  The  writers  to-day  of  letters -and  diaries  in  prose 
are  going  through  the  same  mechanism  as  all  the  earliest 

*  "Poetry  is  the  most  emphatical  language  that  can  be  found 
for  those  creations  of  the  mind  'which  ecstasy  is  very  cunning 
in.' "  Hazlitt  On  Poetry.  "The  imaginative  faculty  (has)  the 
capabilities  of  ecstasy  and  possession."  Lowell,  "The  Imagina- 
tion." The  Function  of  the  Poet." 


194         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

poets.  When  they  use  patterns  they  are  already  becoming 
artificial  and  are  imitating  other  verse  writers  and  obeying 
rules  that  they  studied. 

We  have  long  been  familiar  with  the  saying  that  every 
man  is  a  poet,  though  he  does  not  write  what  is  known  as 
poetry.  There  is  no  psychical  difference  between  the  aver- 
age man  and  the  great  poet.  They  both  are  subject  to 
emotions,  have  imagination,  and  both  express  their  emo- 
tions in  some  manner.  The  only  difference  between  the 
average  man  and  the  poet  is  that  the  poet  takes  the  average 
man's  speech,  elaborates  it,  and  puts  it  into  shape  so  that 
it  moves  others. 

Poetry  is  born  in  man's  soul  when  his  emotions  are 
aroused,  and  no  emotions  are  aroused  unless  they  are  ex- 
pressed in  some  way.  Hence  Croce's  view  is  correct  that 
poetry  is  expression,  if  he  means  by  expression  emotional 
and  imaginative  expression.  People  have  too  long  been 
under  the  impression  that  the  poet  was  a  different  creature 
from  the  rest  of  mankind,  subject  to  a  livelier  imagination, 
or  intenser  emotions.  He  is  no  different;  on  the  con- 
trary, there  are  many  people  who  never  wrote  a  line  who 
are  more  emotional  and  imaginative  than  many  poets.  The 
process  of  the  lover  writing  a  letter  involves  the  same 
imaginative  function  as  of  the  poet  penning  a  love  poem. 
The  prose  expression  of  emotion  is  also  poetry,  but  we 
have  hitherto  given  the  name  "poetry"  only  to  the  verse 
literary  composition. 

There  is  great  unanimity  of  opinion  as  to  the  connec- 
tion of  literary  poetry  in  its  origin  with  dance,  music  and 
song,  an  opinion  that  is  wrong  nevertheless.  In  fact, 
most  phases  of  poetry  neither  have  nor  ever  had  anything 
in  common  with  dancing  or  music  or  song. 

Poetry  such  as  we  find  in  the  great  English  verse  or 
prose  poets  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  little  relation  to 


EMANATES  FROM  THE  UNCONSCIOUS  195 

dancing,  music  or  singing.  Take  the  Shakespearean  plays, 
the  tragedies  of  Hamlet  or  King  Lear,  where  we  have 
philosophizing  and  descriptions  of  painful  crises  which 
are  great  poetry.  A  poet  does  not  have  to  sing  a  .great 
idea,  nor  dance  to  it,  nor  put  it  to  music.  Ibsen  and 
Balzac  are  poets  and  yet  they  are  far  away  from  dancing, 
singing  or  music.  Though  most  good  singers  are  poets, 
one  does  not  have  to  be  a  singer  to  be  a  poet.  Then  take 
great  impassioned  oratory  or  beautiful  emotional  word 
painting  in  prose  or  verse,  or  any  idea  bathed  in  feeling. 
They  may  all  be  poetry  and  need  not  be — in  fact,  by  their 
nature,  are  not — related  to  dance,  music  and  song. 

An  autobiographical  verse  poem  like  Wordsworth's 
Prelude,  or  a  series  of  impassioned  ideas  like  Lucretius's 
Nature  of  Things,  or  a  novel  in  verse  like  Aurora  Leigh 
is  not  related  to  song,  yet  it  is  poetry  in  parts.  (This 
does  not  mean  that  poetry  is  not  the  soul  of  music  or 
dancing.) 

There  is  nothing  more  amusing  than  to  read  the  innum- 
erable and  contradictory  theories  about  the  origin  of 
poetry.  Many  believe  that  the  first  poetry  was  pastoral 
poetry,  since  the  shepherd's  life  was,  after  hunting,  the 
first  occupation  appropriate  and  conducive  to  composing 
poetry.  Scaliger,  Fontenelle  and  Pope  endorsed  this  view. 
Others  believe  that  the  original  poetry  was  written  to 
express  man's  religious  emotions;  his  prayers  and  hymns 
to  his  gods  are  considered  by  many  the  first  poetry.  Again 
the  communistic  needs  of  the  clans  are  supposed  to  have 
invited  the  poet  to  write.  Celebration  of  tribal  victories, 
praise  of  heroes,  incitement  to  martial  courage  and  re- 
venge, the  virtues  of  the  clan,  were  supposed  to  be  the 
first  function  of  the  poets.  Epics  and  ballads  are  cited  in 
proof  of  this.  Again,  satires  and  invectives  are  thought 
to  be  the  first  forms  as  they  were  used  by  the  bards,  who 


ig6         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

were  also  magicians  and  hurled  them  as  potent  forces 
against  the  enemy.  Thomas  Peacock  believed  eulogies 
constituted  the  first  poetry  of  the  human  race.  Then  the 
proverb  and  parable  have  their  devotees,  as  the  first  imagi- 
native representation  of  the  common  thinking  of  the 
earliest  people,  and  as  the  readiest  to  lend  themselves  to 
the  use  of  verse  patterns.  One  could  go  on  naming  vari- 
ous theories  that  have  been  advanced  as  to  what  kind  of 
poetry  is  earliest;  there  is  the  poem  which  designates  the 
awakening  of  a  moral  conscience;  there  is  the  mythical 
tale  reciting  the  dream  desires  of  the  tribe;  the  song 
chanted  at  various  labors  and  toilings  of  the  common  peo- 
ple; the  chorus  which  served  as  an  accompaniment  to 
holiday  celebrations  and  nature  worship;  the  chanting  of 
the  first  cantors  or  priests  and  the  responses  of  the  con- 
gregation; there  are  the  ecstatic  utterances  of  the  earliest 
prophets,  soothsayers  and  magicians;  the  admonitions  of 
counselors  and  legislators;  the  personal  grievances  and 
complaints  recited  by  those  seeking  redress  before  the 
assembly  or  chief;  marriage  hymns,  love  poems  and 
elegies;  all  of  these  are  separately  cited  as  the  original 
springs  from  which  later  poetry  developed. 

The  critics  assume  that  man  was  originally  possessed 
of  one  emotion  only,  which  he  celebrated,  or  that  only  one 
feeling  predominated  to  which  he  gave  vent.  Now,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  early  man  was  subject  to  multifarious 
emotions  just  as  we  are  to-day,  and  he  voiced  them  all, 
in  speech,  later  writing  them  down  in  prose  and  finally 
in  some  verse  pattern.  Some  of  these  emotions  were 
originally  written  down  with  rhythm  and  repetition.  There 
really  was  no  state  when  poetry  first  began,  for  the 
first  spoken  poetry  is  as  early  as  human  speech  which  has 
always  been  used  to  express  emotions. 

Written  poetry  is  merely  the  mechanical  transmission 


EMANATES  FROM  THE  UNCONSCIOUS  197 

of  spoken  poetry.  We  cannot  ignore  the  poetry  of  nations 
which  has  been  handed  down  by  tradition  and  never  been 
reduced  to  writing. 

The  mental  process  of  composing  poetry  to-day  is  no 
different  from  what  it  ever  was.  Different  people  express 
verbally  the  ranges  of  all  the  emotions  and  several  indi- 
viduals give  us  the  written  expression  of  these  moods 
in  good  form,  so  as  to  evoke  sympathy  in  the  hearer  or 
reader.  It  is  true,  in  early  times  the  religious  and  martial 
emotions  were  much  expressed,  but  this  does  not  prove  that 
religious  or  warlike  feelings  alone  gave  rise  to  the  art  of 
poetry.  Every  emotion  man  felt  gave  rise  to  the  art 
of  poetry.  Poetry  is  the  expression  of  all  the  emotions 
and  is  born  with  speech  and  hence  is  universal  expression 
and  the  most  ancient  art  we  possess. 

Poetry  is,  however,  so  often  the  expression  of  a  per- 
sonal complaint,  the  expression  of  a  repression,  that  we 
may.  say  that  its  real  origin  to-day,  and  at  all  times,  is 
the  prose  elegy.  The  person  who  pours  out  his  griefs  Is 
psychologically  the  poet  in  action.  Attempts  have  been 
made  by  Greek  scholars  to  show  that  both  the  epic  and 
the  drama  had  their  origin  at  public  funerals  where  elegies 
were  recited  instead  of  at  the  Dionysian  rites.  This  is 
very  plausible.  The  pang  of  death  was  one  of  the  causes 
that  led  to  the  creation  of  poetry,  especially  since  early 
man  was  carried  off  too  frequently  by  wars,  plagues  and 
wild  animals.  One  should  add  that  the  pangs  of  the  loss 
of  one's  mate,  the  grief  resulting  from  being  worsted  in 
the  battle  for  the  female,  were  other  contributing  causes 
of  the  creation  of  poetry.  In  short,  the  origin  of  poetry 
was  personal,  and  much  ancient  poetry  dealt  with  a  lament 
of  some  kind.  This  has  been  the  characteristic  of  poetry 
ever  since.  Grief  is  the  source  of  poetry.  Note  the  num- 
ber of  wailing  poems  in  Irish  and  Scotch  literature  where 


198         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

the  death  of  a  husband  in  war,  or  the  loss  of  love,  plays 
a  part.  Much  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  is  elegiac.  The 
earliest  poems  from  Egypt,  China,  Japan  contain  laments. 
Savage  literature  is  full  of  them.  The  hymn  is  really 
a  lament  in  the  form  of  a  plea.  The  dirge,  the  threnody, 
the  elegy,  these  constitute  the  bulk  of  much  poetry, 
ancient  and  modern.  Burns's  poems  are  chiefly  dirges 
of  some  kind.  The  dirge  is  most  human  and  appealing 
to  us.  Some  of  the  most  effective  poetry  in  the  Bible 
are  the  cries  of  David  in  the  Psalms  and  the  dirges  in 
Lamentations. 

The  modern  elegy  whether  in  prose  or  verse,  whether  it 
laments  death  or  lost  love,  is  the  direct  offspring  of  the 
earliest  savage  cry  of  grief.  The  savage  wailed  in  public 
as  the  poet  does.  Our  novelists  still  do  unavoidably  the 
same  thing,  often  covertly.  When  Tolstoy  wrote  of  the 
death  of  Levin's  brother  in  Anna  Karenina  or  Ivan 
Ilyitch,  he  was  actually  bemoaning  his  own  brother,  whose 
death  made  a  lasting  impression  upon  him. 

Gummere  thinks  that  the  early  poetry  of  man  was  com- 
munal and  that  modern  personal  lyric  poetry  is  a  develop- 
ment from  communal  poetry.  Surely  Professor  Gummere 
was  aware  that  among  the  religious  and  communal  poetry 
of  the  Anglo-Saxons,  for  instance,  we  have  such  a  fine 
elegy  as  The  Wanderer  and  such  a  beautiful  dream  poem 
as  The  Phoenix.  It  is  a  great  mistake  to  think  that  per- 
sonal poetry  is  of  modern  growth,  dating  from  Villon.  It 
has  been  more  developed  in  modern  times.  And  then 
there  is  much  of  the  personal  element  in  this  so-called 
communal  poetry.  The  man  who  sang  for  his  tribe  in 
ancient  times  felt  with  his  tribe,  and  hence  was  both 
communal  and  personal. 

The  research  into  the  origins  of  poetry  can  be  made  in 
the  soul  of  any  writer  to-day.  The  same  psychological 


EMANATES  FROM  THE  UNCONSCIOUS  199 

mechanisms  that  are  at  work  in  the  composition  of  his 
poem  were  at  work  in  the  production  of  the  most  crude 
savage  verbal  outpourings.  It  is  a  personal  repression 
leading  to  the  utterance  of  a  complaint  or  the  building  of 
a  dream-world.  Keble  was  one  of  the  few  critics  who 
considered  the  personal  complaint  the  chief  origin  of 
poetry. 

Schopenhauer  defined  poetry  as  one  of  the  arts  whose 
mission  was  to  reveal  an  idea  in  the  Platonic  sense,  that 
is,  the  permanent  essential  forms  of  the  world  and  all  its 
phenomena;  art  to  him  was  a  way  of  looking  at  things 
independent  of  the  principle  of  sufficient  reason.  In  ac- 
cordance with  his  philosophy  he  regards  ideas  as  the  ob- 
jectivity of  the  thing  in  itself,  the  will.  He  looks  upon 
the  different  grades  of  the  obj'ectivation  of  the  will  as 
fixed.  The  result  is  that  he  considers  the  peculiar  end 
of  all  the  fine  arts  "to  elucidate  the  objectivation  of  will 
at  the  lowest  grades  of  its  visibility,  in  which  it  shows 
itself  as  the  dumb  unconscious  tendency  of  the  mass  in 
accordance  with  laws,  and  yet  already  reveals  a  breach  of 
the  unity  of  will  with  itself  in  a  conflict  between  gravity 
and  rigidity,"  while  tragedy  "presents  to  us  at  the  highest 
grades  of  the  objectivation  of  will  this  very  conflict  with 
itself  in  terrible  magnitude  and  distinctness."  (World 
as  Will  and  Idea,  V.  I,  p.  330.) 

All  this  is  saying  in  philosophical  terms  what  we  know 
has  been  the  mission  of  art,  the  portrayal  of  man  defeated 
in  his  blind  and  impotent  desires.  No  one  denies  that 
poetry  must  and  always  will  portray  man  in  such  circum- 
stances. Freud  has  restated  the  problem  when  he  showed 
that  poets  deal  with  their  own  repressions. 

One  cannot  accept  Schopenhauer's  views  that  the  aim 
of  art  is  to  annihilate  the  will  to  live.  He  failed  to  see 


200         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

that  much  of  this  tragic  literature  acts  as  a  relief  to  us 
and  makes  us  want  to  live  all  the  more. 

Dr.  Arthur  H.  Fairchild  deserves  credit  for  assigning 
high  importance  to  poetry  when  he  says  that  it  is  a  means 
of  self-realization  and  is  a  biological  necessity.  In  his 
The  Making  of  Poetry  he  expresses  what  is  really  the 
psychoanalytical  theory  which  sees  in  poetry  a  means  of 
freeing  oneself  of  complexes,  a  way  of  restoring  oneself 
to  a  better  state  of  mind,  a  cure  for  incipient  neurosis. 
When  we  are  sad,  the  reading  of  sad  poetry  relieves  us. 
As  Emerson  said,  "Poetry  is  the  effort  of  man  to  in- 
demnify himself  for  the  wrongs  of  his  condition."  The 
toiler  reads  of  other  toilers  in  literature,  say  in  Zola's 
Germinal  or  Hauptmann's  Weavers,  or  Sinclair's  Jungle, 
and  his  emotions  are  discharged.  It  is  true  he  may  be 
driven  to  action,  but  the  poet  has  nothing  to  do  with  that. 
The  lover,  unhappy  in  his  love,  finds  help  in  hearing  a 
poet  express  his  own  surcharged  feelings  resulting  from 
love  troubles.  The  reader  may  by  reading  be  prevented 
from  going  mad.  The  great  public  which  does  not  read 
good  literature  finds  relief  in  plays,  moving  pictures, 
magazine  stories  or  newspapers,  all  of  which,  while  it  is 
not  generally  good  poetry,  may  have  the  effect  of  a 
catharsis  on  the  public's  rudely  developed  aesthetic  sense. 

Mankind  hungers  for  poetry.  Those  who  are  unable  to 
appreciate  it  in  higher  form,  resort  to  imitations  and  sub- 
stitutes, which  express  their  emotions  and  relieve  them. 
He  who  can  read  and  enjoy  the  great  masters  of  prose 
and  verse,  or  appreciate  good  music  and  painting,  does  not 
have  to  resort  to  the  political  meeting  or  religious  revivals 
to  have  his  emotions  played  on.  Athletic  contests  like 
baseball,  football  and  prize  fights  usually  help  people  to 
express  and  relieve  surcharged  emotions.  The  love  for 
cheap  forms  of  movies  and  card  games  has  its  origin 


EMANATES  FROM  THE  UNCONSCIOUS  201 

in  a  desire  for  emotional  discharge.  Man  resorts  to  every 
measure  to  give  his  emotions  play.  He  reads  newspapers 
and  trashy  magazines,  he  likes  to  hear  melodramas  and 
ranting  orators,  often  because  he  has  a  love  for  emotional 
excitement  which  he  cannot  satisfy  by  literature  of  the 
best  kind.  He  cannot  concentrate,  he  cannot  think  clearly, 
he  is  ignorant  of  the  simplest  principles  of  literary  art ;  he 
cannot  read  poetry,  yet  he  hungers  for  it.  His  dormant 
instincts  will  even  seek  satisfaction  in  condemnation  and 
persecution  to  satisfy  such  emotions  which  he  cannot 
express  by  reading. 

The  creation  and  reading  of  poetry  in  prose  or  verse  is 
an  achievement  common  to  man  alone  of  the  animals. 
He  is  not  separated  from  them  by  moral  or  intellectual 
faculties,  for  animals  have  these,  but  by  his  faculty  to 
create  art  and  make  others  share  enjoyment  of  them.  It 
may  be  that  the  spider  and  the  bee  derive  aesthetic  satis- 
faction from  contemplating  the  web  or  the  hive  they  build, 
or  the  bird  gets  artistic  pleasure  from  the  song  it  sings 
or  hears,  or  any  animal  may  win  sympathy  from  another 
by  some  mute  act,  but  man  alone  puts  his  emotions  and 
ideas  in  words  in  an  endurable  work  of  art  so  as  to  relieve 
himself  and  move  others.  What  separates  man  from  ani- 
mals is  not  then  religion — is  not  the  religion  of  a  dog 
centered  in  his  master  as  Anatole  France  has  so  quaintly 
shown — but  the  ability  to  create  and  enjoy  poetry,  by 
which  I  mean  literature  in  its  highest  prose  or  verse  form, 
music,  painting  and  sculpture. 

And  a  life  devoted  to  poetry  is  the  best  life  we  can 
seek.  Let  a  man  have  his  necessities  satisfied,  and  there 
is  no  higher  form  of  life  than  to  enjoy  and  if  possible  to 
create  poetry.  Poetry  makes  us  want  to  live  and  gives  us 
zest  in  life.  Life  exists  for  sensations  and  we  get  our 
sensations  out  of  poetry.  Life  exists  for  the  enjoyment 


202         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

and  creation  of  poetry.  The  unlettered  savage  has  his 
craving  for  poetry  satisfied  in  his  dancing,  and  war  cries, 
in  religion  and  tribal  customs.  The  child  has  it  satisfied 
in  his  toys  and  games.  Adult  man  appeases  his  hunger  for 
poetry  in  diverse  ways.  Literature,  art  and  music  are  so 
far  the  highest  forms  of  poetry  we  know,  and  in  literature 
I  include  philosophy  or  thought,  in  prose  as  well  as  verse. 

Poetry  acts  as  a  necessary  relief  to  us  for  emotions  and 
ideas  that  seek  expression,  and  is  hence  more  real  than 
any  other  form  of  life. 

Our  views  of  poetry  from  a  psychoanalytic  point  of 
view  finds  confirmation  even  in  the  Bible.  One  of  the 
leading  prophets  and  the  leading  psalmists  has  each 
told  us  in  scorching  words  how  he  felt  before  he  created. 
Jeremiah  says  of  God,  "His  word  was  in  mine  heart  as  a 
burning  fire  shut  up  in  my  bones,  and  I  was  weary  with 
forbearing,  and  I  could  not  stay,"  Ch.  20,  v.  9.  David 
also  said,  "My  heart  was  hot  within  me,  while  I  was 
musing  the  fire  burned:  then  spake  I  with  my  tongue," 
Psalms,  Ch.  39,  v.  3.  Both  of  these  poets  had  made  reso- 
lutions to  keep  silent,  but  could  not ;  their  choked  emotions 
burned  like  fire.  Their  disturbed  souls  sought  relief  by 
expression.  Thus  the  great  prophecies  and  psalms  had 
a  subjective  origin  and  a  homeopathic  effect  upon  their 
authors,  and  they  have  this  effect  on  us  to-day, 


CHAPTER  XI 

LOVE  ECSTASY  IN  ARABIAN   POETRY 

ORIENTAL  poetry,  especially  that  of  the  Arabs  and  the 
Persians,  is  notable  for  its  interpenetration  with  ecstasy 
couched  in  intricate  conventional  forms.  The  Oriental 
poems  abound  numerously  in  far-fetched  figures  of 
speech,  and  are  written  in  metres  following  definite  laws 
and  are  subject  to  difficult  and  uniform  rhymes  continued 
in  every  line  in  poems  of  great  length.  In  fact  the  greatest 
historian  of  the  Mohammedans,  Ibn  Khaldun  (1332-1406), 
defined  poetry  as  effective  discourse  based  on  metaphor 
and  descriptions,  divided  into  verses  agreeing  with  one 
another  in  metre  and  rhyme,  each  verse  having  a  separate 
idea,  and  the  whole  conforming  to  old  Arab  models.  A 
poet  was  supposed  to  get  many  thousands  of  verses  by 
heart  before  practicing  his  art.  One  of  the  chapters  in 
Ibn  Khaldun's  famous  Prolegomena  *  or  introduction  to 
his  history,  Book  of  Examples,  has  a  title  stating  that  the 
art  of  composing  is  concerned  with  words  and  not  ideas. 

But  in  spite  of  slavish  adherence  to  technique  it  was 
taken  for  granted  that  ecstasy  was  the  main  object  of 
poetry.  There  is  probably  more  ecstasy  in  the  poetry  of 
the  Arabs  and  Persians  than  in  that  of  most  other  na- 
tions, and  it  is  an  ecstasy  that  breaks  through  the  molds 
of  form.  It  is  a  matter  of  astonishment  that  the  artificial 
forms  did  not  utterly  choke  out  the  ecstasy.  Professor 
Edgar  G.  Browne  in  his  scholarly  Literary  History  of 

*  There  is  a  French  translation  of  the  Prolegomena  by  Mac 
Guckin  de  Slane. 

203 


204         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Persia  has  devoted  the  first  chapter  of  the  second  volume 
to  Persian  metres  and  he  calls  attention  to  the  conven- 
tional metaphors,  bombast  and  inflation  of  the  Arabic 
poets  who  were  not  without  influence  upon  the  Persians. 
We  to-day  may  accept  the  definition  of  poetry  given  in 
the  Four  Discourses*  (1162)  of  Nidhami  I  Arudi,  for 
though  he  also  believed  in  the  importance  of  the  trappings 
of  verse,  he  had  ecstasy  primarily  in  mind.  He  defined 
poetry  thus: 

Poetry  is  that  art  whereby  the  poet  arranges  imagin- 
ary propositions,  and  adopts  the  deductions,  with  the 
result  that  he  can  make  a  little  thing  appear  great  and 
a  great  thing  small,  or  cause  good  to  appear  in  the  garb 
of  evil  and  evil  in  the  garb  of  good.  By  acting  on  the 
imagination,  he  excites  the  faculties  of  anger  and  con- 
cupiscence in  such  a  way  that  by  his  suggestion  men's 
temperaments  become  affected  with  exaltation  or  depres- 
sion ;  whereby  he  conduces  to  the  accomplishment  of  great 
things  in  the  order  of  the  world. 

What  more  effective  definition  could  there  be  of  the 
utilitarian  power  of  art  to  take  man  out  of  himself  and 
exalt  him  into  a  state  of  beneficial  ecstasy? 

Ibn  Khaldun  said: 

Poetry  is,  of  all  the  forms  of  discourses,  that  which 
the  Arabs  regarded  as  the  noblest;  they  also  made  it 
the  depository  of  their  knowledge  and  their  history, 
the  testimony  which  would  attest  their  virtues  and  faults, 
the  store-house  in  which  were  found  the  greater  part 
of  their  scientific  views  and  their  maxims  of  wisdom. 
The  poetic  faculty  was  as  much  deeply  rooted  in  them 
as  in  all  the  other  faculties  they  possessed. 

He  continues,  that  they  have  handled  poetry  so  well, 
that  one  could  deceive  oneself  and  believe  that  this  gift, 

*  Translated  by  Prof.  Browne  in  the  Journal  of  the  Royal 
Asiatic  Society,  1899. 


LOVE  ECSTASY  IN  ARABIAN  POETRY  205 

which  is  really  an  acquired  art,  was  with  them  an  innate 
one. 

These  remarkable  words  of  Ibn  Khaldun  will  help  us 
to  understand  the  famous  saying  that  poetry  was  the 
register  of  the  Arabs.  Never  before  nor  since  has 
poetry  been  so  interwoven  with  a  nation's  life. 
The  stories  of  the  competitions  for  prizes  for 
composing  poetry,  of  the  happiness  when  a  poet  was 
born,  of  the  importance  assumed  by  the  discussion  and 
recitation  of  poetry  among  all  classes,  read  to  us  like 
myths.  Yet  the  fact  that  poetry  should  be  part  of  the  life 
of  a  passionate  people  who  lived  in  the  desert,  free  and 
untrammeled,  is  not  strange.  The  Arabs  themselves  at- 
tribute also  their  great  superiority  in  poetry  to  the  beauty 
of  their  language,  especially  as  spoken  by  the  Bedouins 
in  the  desert.  The  great  Arabian  poet  Abu  Nuwas  com- 
pleted his  education  by  sojourning  a  year  among  the 
Bedouins. 

Another  factor  enhancing  their  poetry  and  one  not  to 
be  ignored  is  that  after  622  A.D.  in  Post-islamic  times, 
poetry  was  rewarded  by  gifts.  Hence  the  eulogy  grew 
into  prominence  and  the  poets  were  fabulously  rewarded 
for  their  poems.  This,  of  course,  led  to  fulsome  and  cring- 
ing eulogies.  The  caliph  was  the  patron.  When  Mo- 
hammed appeared  it  seemed  that  poetry  would  die  out,  but 
it  flourished  more  than  ever.  It  was  only  after  the  Abbasid 
caliphate  was  exterminated  by  the  Mongol  invasion  (1258 
A.D.)  that  poetry  declined  in  Arabia  to  such  an  extent 
that,  as  Ibn  Khaldun  says,  no  prominent  man  would  deign 
to  devote  himself  to  it. 

Although  the  Arabs  excelled  in  various  kinds  of  poetry, 
we  think  of  them  primarily  as  love  poets. 

The  Arabs,  as  we  gather  from  The  Arabian  Nights, 


206         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

were  a  people  especially  devoted  to  tenderness  in  love. 
When  the  Arab  was  smitten  with  love  he  was  a  helpless 
weeping  child.  There  was  one  tribe,  that  of  Azra,  wherein 
the  victims  were  said  to  die  of  love.  One  poet  said  he 
knew  of  thirty  young  men  whom  love  sickness  carried  off. 
In  answer  to  a  reproach  for  this  weakness,  one  of  the 
tribe  replied:  "You  would  not  talk  like  that  if  you  had 
seen  the  great  black  eyes  of  our  women  darting  fire  from 
beneath  the  veil  of  their  long  lashes,  if  you  had  seen  them 
smile  and  their  death  gleaming  between  their  brown  lips." 
(Stendhal:  On  Love,  p.  218.) 

Arabic  poetry  in  the  period  before  Islam  between  500 
A.D.  and  622  A.D.  did  not  consist  of  pure  eroticism. 
Satire,  eulogy,  elegy,  revenge,  martial  feeling,  chiefly 
characterized  it.  Many  poems  were  also  devoted  to  the 
praise  of  animals  and  the  description  of  nature.  The  odes 
or  Qasidas,  however,  began  with  a  love  prelude,  called 
nasib,  in  which  the  poet  dwelt  on  his  love  sorrows  merely 
to  win  the  hearts  of  his  hearers  to  his  chief  theme.  One 
of  the  best  of  these  is  that  in  the  ode  of  Imru'ul  Qays  the 
first  and  greatest  of  the  seven  poets  of  the  Muallaqat. 

Pure  erotic  poetry  appeared  after  Islam  with  the  luxury 
that  spread  with  the  growth  of  wealth,  but  the  nasib  con- 
tinued to  be  used,  especially  in  eulogies.  The  poets  still 
wrote  like  the  Pre-islamic  poets  instead  of  celebrating 
Islam.  The  Umayyad  Dynasty,  which  extended  from  661 
to  749  A.D.,  saw  the  birth  of  pure  love  poetry  celebrated 
not  as  introductory  or  episodic  but  purely  for  itself.  The 
love  story  of  one  of  the  Arabian  erotic  poets  of  the  period, 
Majnun,  was  celebrated  by  the  great  Persian  poet, 
Nidhami,  who  flourished  in  the  twelfth  century.  His 
Laila  and  Majnun  has  been  translated  into  English  by  Mr. 
Atkinson.  The  story  was  retold  by  many  Persian  and 
Ottoman  poets.  Then  there  was  Jamil,  who  was  the  lover 


LOVE  ECSTASY  IN  ARABIAN  POETRY  207 

of  Buthaina.  These  love  poems  by  Majnun  and  Jamil 
were  of  popular  origin,  and  represented  the  spirit  of  the 
people.  There  were  many  other  love  poets,  while  some 
did  not  devote  themselves  exclusively  to  love. 

The  most  celebrated,  however,  of  the  love  poets  was 
the  handsome  wealthy  Omar  ibn  Abi  Rabia  (643-719 
A.D.).  He  was  of  the  tribe  of  Koraish,  the  same  tribe  to 
which  Mohammed  himself  belonged.  This  tribe  was 
famous  for  many  things,  but  not  for  poetry  until  Omar 
took  away  the  reproach.  His  poems  were  called  a  crime 
against  God,  yet  a  cousin  of  the  prophet  memorized  some 
of  them.  The  fullest  account  of  him  in  English  and  of 
his  love  affairs,  with  translations  from  a  few  of  his  poems, 
appears  in  an  essay  by  William  G.  Palgrave  in  Essays  on 
Eastern  Questions.  Omar  was  united  in  marriage  to  his 
love  Zeynab  after  a  stormy  courtship,  opposed  by  her 
people,  but  he  had  several  love  affairs.  The  best  idea  of 
the  sweetness  and  pathos  of  his  love  poetry  is  conveyed 
without  further  comment  by  giving  two  translations  made 
by  Mr.  Palgrave. 

Ah  for  the  throes  of  a  heart  sorely  wounded ! 

Ah  for  the  eyes  that  have  smit  me  with  madness! 

Gently  she  moved  in  the  calmness  of  beauty, 

Moved  as  the  bough  to  the  light  breeze  of  morning. 

Dazzled  my  eyes  as  they  gazed,  till  before  me 

All  was  a  mist  and  confusion  of  figures. 

Ne'er  had  I  sought  her,  and  ne'er  had  she  sought  me; 

Fated  the  love,  and  the  hour,  and  the  meeting. 

There  I  beheld  her  as  she  and  her  damsels 

Paced  'twixt  the  temple  and  outer  enclosure ; 

Damsels  the  fairest,  the  loveliest,  the  gentlest, 

Passing  like  slow- wending  heifers  at  evening; 

Ever  surrounding  with  courtly  observance 

Her  whom  they  honor,  the  peerless  of  women. 

Then  to  a  handmaid,  the  youngest,  she  whispered, 

"Omar  is  near:  let  us  mar  his  devotions. 


208         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Cross  on  his  path  that  he  needs  may  observe  us  ; 
Give  him  a  signal,  my  sister,  demurely." 
"Signals  I  gave,  but  he  marked  not  or  heeded," 
Answered  the  damsel,  and  hasted  to  meet  me. 
Ah  for  that  night  by  the  vale  of  the  sand-hills! 
Ah  for  the  dawn  when  in  silence  we  parted! 
He  who  the  morn  may  awake  to  her  kisses 
Drinks  from  the  cup  of  the  blessed  in  heaven. 

Ah !  where  have  they  made  my  dwelling  ?    Far,  how  far, 

from  her,  the  loved  one, 
Since  they  drove  me  lone  and  parted  to  the  sad  sea-shore 

of  Aden. 
Thou  art  mid  the  distant  mountains ;  and  to  each,  the  loved 

and  lover, 
Nought  is  left  but  sad  remembrance,  and  a  share  of  aching 

sorrow. 
Hadst  thou  seen  thy  lover  weeping  by  the  sand-hills  of 

the  ocean, 

Thou  hadst  deemed  him  struck  by  madness:  was  it  mad- 
ness? was  it  love? 
I  may  forget  all  else,  but  never  shall  I  forget  her  as  she 

stood, 

As  I  stood,  that  hour  of  parting ;  heart  to  heart  in  speech- 
less anguish; 
Then  she  turned  her  to  Thoreyya,  to  her  sister,  sadly 

weeping ; 
Coursed  the  tears  down  cheek  and  bosom,  till  her  passion 

found  an  utterance ; 
"Tell  him,  sister,  tell  him ;  yet  be  not  as  one  that  chides  or 

murmurs, 
Why  so  long  thy  distant  tarrying  on  the  unlovely  shores 

of  Yemen? 
Is  it  sated  ease  detains  thee,  or  the  quest  of  wealth  that 

lures  thee? 
Tell  me  what  the  price  they  paid  thee,  that  from  Mecca 

bought  thy  absence  ?" 

I  give  three  other  examples  of  Arabic  love  poetry  by 
different  translators,  prose  renderings  by  McGuckin  de 


LOVE  ECSTASY  IN  ARABIAN  POETRY  209 

Slane  in  Ibn  Khallikan's  Biographical  Dictionary  and  by 
Terrick  Hamilton  in  the  Romance  of  Antar,  respectively, 
and  a  verse  translation  by  Lyall. 

The  following  poem  (Ibn  Khallikan,  V.  2,  p.  330)  ii 
attributed  to  Ibn  Alaamidi  of  the  eleventh  century: 

Admire  that  passionate  lover!  he  recalls  to  mind  the 
well  protected  park  and  sighs  aloud ;  he  hears  the  call  of 
love  and  stops  bewildered.  The  nightingales  awaken  the 
trouble  of  his  heart,  and  his  pains,  now  redoubled,  drive 
all  prudence  from  his  mind.  An  ardent  passion  excites 
his  complaints ;  sadness  moves  him  to  tears ;  his  old  affec- 
tions awake,  but  these  were  never  dormant.  His  friends 
say  that  his  fortitude  has  failed;  but  the  very  mountain 
of  Yalamlan  would  groan,  or  sink  oppressed,  under  such 
a  weight  of  love.  Think  not  that  compulsion  will  lead 
him  to  forget  her;  willingly  he  accepted  the  burden  of 
love ;  how  then  could  he  cast  it  off  against  his  will  ? 

— O  Otba,  faultless  in  thy  charms!  be  indulgent,  be 
kind,  for  thy  lover's  sickness  has  reached  its  height.  By 
thee  the  willow  of  the  hill  was  taught  to  wave  its  branches 
with  grace,  when  thy  form,  robed  in  beauty,  first  appeared 
before  it.  Thou  hast  lent  thy  tender  glances  to  the  gazelles 
of  the  desert,  and  therefore  the  fairest  object  to  be  seen 
is  the  eye  of  the  antelope.  Sick  with  the  pains  of  love, 
bereft  of  sleep  and  confounded,  I  should  never  have  out- 
lived my  nights,  unless  revived  by  the  appearance  of  thy 
favor,  deceitful  as  it  was.  These  four  shall  witness  the 
sincerity  of  my  attachment :  tears,  melancholy,  a  mind  de- 
ranged, and  care,  my  constant  visitor;  could  Yazbul  feel 
this  last ;  it  would  become  like  as — Suha.  Some  reproach 
me  for  loving  thee,  but  I  am  not  to  be  reclaimed ;  others 
bid  me  forbear,  but  I  heed  them  not.  They  tell  thee  that 
I  desire  thee  for  thy  beauty ;  how  very  strange !  and  where 
is  the  beauty  which  is  not  an  object  of  desire?  For  thee  I 
am  the  most  loving  of  lovers ;  none,  I  know,  are  like  me 
(in  sincerity}  or  like  thee  in  beauty. 

The  next  poem  represents  one  of  the  many  outbursts 
of  Antar: 


210         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

O  bird  of  the  tamarisk !  thou  hast  rendered  my  sorrows 
more  poignant,  thou  hast  redoubled  my  griefs.  O  bird 
of  the  tamarisk!  if  thou  invokest  an  absent  friend  for 
whom  thou  art  mourning,  even  then,  O  bird,  is  thy  afflic- 
tion like  the  distress  I  also  feel?  Augment  my  sorrows 
and  my  lamentations ;  aid  me  to  weep  till  thou  seest  won- 
ders from  the  discharge  of  my  eyelids.  Weep,  too,  from 
the  excesses  that  I  endure.  Fear  not — only  guard  the 
trees  from  the  breath  of  my  burning  sighs.  Quit  me  not 
till  I  die  of  love,  the  victim  of  passion  of  absence,  and 
separation.  Fly,  perhaps  in  the  Hijaz  thou  mayest  see 
some  one  riding  from  Aalij  to  Nomani,  wandering  with 
a  damsel,  she  traversing  wilds,  and  drowned  in  tears, 
anxious  for  her  native  land.  May  God  inspire  thee,  O 
dove !  when  thou  truly  sees  her  loaded  camels.  Announce 
my  death.  Say,  thou  hast  left  him  stretched  on  the  earth, 
and  that  his  tears  are  exhausted,  but  that  he  weeps  in 
blood.  Should  the  breeze  ask  thee  whence  thou  art,  say, 
he  is  deprived  of  his  heart  and  stupefied;  he  is  in  a 
strange  land,  weeping  for  our  departure,  for  the  God  of 
heaven  has  struck  him  with  affliction  on  account  of  his 
beloved ;  he  is  lying  down  like  a  tender  bird,  that  vultures 
and  eagles  have  bereft  of  its  young,  that  grieves  in  un- 
ceasing plaints  whilst  its  offspring  are  scattered  over  the 
plain  and  the  desert! 

This  poem  by  an  unknown  author  is  tenderness  unex- 
celled : 

One  Unnamed 
Nay,  ask  on  the  sandy  hill  the  ben-tree  with  spreading 

boughs  that  stands  mid  her  sisters,  if  I  greeted  thy 

dwelling-place ; 
And  whether  their  shade  looked  down  upon  me  at  eventide 

as  there  in  my  grief  I  stood,  and  that  for  my  por- 
tion chose: 
And  whether,  at  dawn  still  there,  mine  eyelids  a  burthen 

bore  of  tears  falling  one  by  one,  as  pearls  from  a 

broken  string. 
Yea,  men  long  and  yearn  for  Spring,  the  gladsome:  but 

as  for  me — my  longing  and  Spring  art  thou,  my 

yearning  to  gain  thy  grace ; 


LOVE  ECSTASY  IN  ARABIAN  POETRY  211 

And  men  dread  the  deadly  Drought  that  slays  them :  but 
'  as  for  me — my  Drought  is  to  know  thee  gone,  my 

life  but  a  barren  land! 
And  sooth,  if  I  suffer  when  thou  greet'st  me  with  words 

unkind,  yet  somewhat  of  joy  it  brings  thou  thinkest 

on  me  at  all. 
So  take  thy  delight  that  I  stand  serving  with  aching  heart 

and  eyes  bathed  in  tears  lest  thou  shouldst  sunder 

thyself  from  me. 

Arabic  poetry  may  lack  the  light  of  intellectual  outlook 
that  we  find  in  our  greatest  English  poets;  it  may  be 
deficient  in  the  intensity  of  religious  fervor  characteristic 
of  the  medieval  Hebrew  poets;  it  may  fall  short  of  the 
high  mystic  strain  attained  by  the  Persians,  but  in  the 
fervor  depicting  love  of  passion  they  have  not  been  sur- 
passed. The  greatest  Persian  lyric  love  poet,  Hafiz,  and 
the  greatest  Turkish  lyric  love  poet,  Baqui,  clearly  were 
under  their  influence. 

Arabic  poetry  then  is  probably  richer  in  love  ecstasy 
than  that  of  any  nation.  This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  they 
are  both  a  sensuous  and  at  the  same  time  deeply  religious 
people.  They  were  strongly  emotional,  extremely  vin- 
dictive and  extremely  hospitable.  They  recorded  their 
emotions  unabashed.  They  had  the  naivete  of  the  child 
and  cried  out  their  slightest  pain ;  they  weep  and  bemoan 
constantly.  Antar,  one  of  the  poets  of  the  Muallaqat  and 
the  hero  of  the  romance  bearing  his  name,  is  more  of  a 
child  than  Achilles.  He  is  always  sobbing  and  weeping 
copiously ;  he  is  the  prototype  of  the  medieval  knight  who 
wept  and  declaimed  because  of  absence  of  his  mistress, 
a  feature  of  romance  which  Cervantes  ably  ridiculed  in 
Don  Quixote. 

Thomas  Warton,  the  historian  of  English  poetry,  was 
one  of  the  first  to  point  out  the  Arabic  influence  on  chiv- 
alry and  romanticism.  The  battle  as  to  the  extent  of 


212         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Arabic  influence  has  been  waged  ever  since,  with,  I  be- 
lieve, the  victory  to  the  Arabs.  FitzMaurice  Kelly,  the 
historian  of  Spanish  Literature,  emphasizing  the  Hebrew 
influence,  has  resented  the  statement  of  the  great  Arabic 
influence,  but  Robert  Briffault  in  The  Making  of  Hu- 
manity has  proved  that  this  influence  has  been  under- 
estimated rather  than  exaggerated. 

The  fact  that  there  existed  in  Pre-islamic  times  equal 
morality  for  both  sexes — women  also  were  freer  than  in 
Post-islamic  times — gave  rise  to  romantic  love. 

Arabic  literature  made  the  love  or  erotic  note  in  its 
tender  or  chivalrous  phase,  fashionable.  True,  this  note 
existed  very  sparingly  among  the  Greeks  and  Romans  in 
Sappho  and  Catullus,  but  the  romantic  note  was  singularly 
absent  from  European  literature  in  the  early  medieval  ages. 
Men  loved  then  as  they  did  before  and  after,  but  the  per- 
sonal romantic  love  note  was  not  considered  a  proper  theme 
for  poetry.  The  religious  and  martial  emotions  held  sway. 
Critics  now  admit  that  intense  love  poetry  of  the  Trouba- 
dours appearing  like  an  oasis  in  the  barren  literature  of 
the  medieval  ages  was  influenced  by  the  Arabs,  the  rhymes 
as  well  as  the  themes  being  taken  from  the  east.  The 
troubadours  influence  the  German  Minnesingers,  and 
these  two  groups  remain  among  the  best  composers  of  love 
poetry  Europe  has  had. 

The  troubadours  also  entered  England,  influencing  its 
poetry  for  nearly  two  centuries.* 

The  love  element  in  the  books  of  chivalry  is  due  to 
Arabic  influence.  Cervantes  attributed  his  Don  Quixote 
to  a  Moorish  author  because  the  Moors  wrote  so  many 
romances.  Early  Italian  poetry  owed  much  to  the  love 
poetry  of  Sicily  which  was  impregnated  with  the  Arabic 

*  See  W.  H.  Schofield's  English  Literature  from  the  Rotnan 
Conquest  to  Chaucer,  pp.  67-71. 


LOVE  ECSTASY  IN  ARABIAN  POETRY  213 

spirit.  Wyatt  and  Surrey,  who  traveled  in  Italy,  greatly 
influenced  English  literature.  Thus  Arabic  poetry  some- 
what influenced  English  poetry.  Similarly  the  Spanish 
Cid  shows  traces  in  marked  degree  of  the  Arabic  invasion 
of  Spain.  No  one  has  more  enthusiastically  and  effec- 
tively pointed  out  the  Arabic  influences  in  European  poetry 
than  Sismondi  in  his  history  of  the  literature  of  the  South 
of  Europe.  He  begins  the  work  with,  after  the  introduc- 
tion, a  chapter  on  Arabic  literature,  and  he  especially  rec- 
ognizes that  the  tenderness  of  the  love  sentiment  and  the 
chivalric  attitude  towards  women  came  from  the  Arabs. 
The  most  sympathetic  and  exhaustive  account  of  the  great 
influence  of  Mohammedan  influence  upon  Europe  is  in 
Samuel  P.  Scott's  History  of  the  Moorish  Empire  in 
Spain. 

It  is  said  that  even  the  French  poem,  the  Chanson  de 
Roland,  shows  Arabic  traces  since  the  Arab  invasion  had 
reached  into  France. 

We  recognize  that  there  is  an  invisible  thread  that  binds 
together  love  poems  so  remotely  separated  by  time  and 
place  as  those  of  the  medieval  Persians,  Arabs  and  Trou- 
badours, and  the  modern  English  poets. 

The  Arabic  note  of  ecstasy  is  found  even  in  the  poems 
of  Goethe,  especially  in  a  few  in  his  West  Eastern 
Divan,  influenced  by  his  studies  of  Oriental  literature 
during  the  Napoleonic  wars.  He  used  his  own  experiences 
with  eastern  names,  but  he  never  failed  to  produce  litera- 
ture of  ecstasy.  The  Oriental  romance  also  exerted  an 
influence  on  Beckford,  Landor,  Southey,  Byron  and 
Moore.  Even  Tennyson  got  the  idea  of  Locksley  Hall 
from  reading  Sir  William  Jones's  prose  translation  of  the 
Muallaqat;  Browning  adopted  an  Arabian  metre  in  his 
Abt  Vogler;  George  Meredith's  The  Shaving  of  Shagpat 
was  written  to  emulate  the  Arabian  Nights. 


214         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

The  Arabs  excelled  also  in  the  elegy.  Among  the  most 
famous  elegies  in  Arabic  poetry  are  those  of  Khansa,  a 
Pre-islamic  poetess,  on  the  murder  of  her  two  brothers. 
There  is  an  account  of  her  by  Thomas  C.  Chenery,  in  the 
notes  to  his  translation  of  Hariri's  Assemblies,  V.  i,  pp. 
387-391.  In  fact  the  elegy  is  more  common  among 
early  Pre-islamic  poetry  than  the  love  poem.  The 
Orientals,  particularly  the  medieval  Hebrews,  were  always 
distinguished  in  this  kind  of  poetry.  One  of  the  best, 
certainly  the  best  in  Turkish  poetry,  is  the  elegy  by  Baqui 
on  the  great  Sultan  Suleiman  I,  translated  by  E.  J.  W.  Gibb 
in  Ottoman  Poetry. 

The  Arabian  love  poems  and  elegies  are  proofs  that 
poetry  was  originally,  as  to-day,  a  personal  cry,  an  out- 
burst of  emotion  due  to  repression.  The  cry  of  grief  for 
the  dead  in  battle;  that  is  the  note  in  all  early  literature, 
Occidental  and  Oriental. 

The  poem  among  the  Arabs  and  Hebrews  had  also  a 
definite  utilitarian  purpose.  In  early  times  satire  was 
one  of  the  chief  forms  under  which  lyric  poetry  ap- 
peared. The  poet  was  employed  to  combat  the  enemy  and 
his  curses  against  them  were  supposed  to  be  effective. 
He  was  a  soothsayer,  a  prophet,  a  magician.  He  voiced 
not  only  the  communistic  feeling  of  the  tribes,  but  his 
personal  emotions.  Even  down  to  our  day  the  public 
demands  that  the  poet  write  poems  against  the  enemy  in 
time  of  war.  Goethe  was  criticized  for  refusing  to  write 
against  the  French,  for  example,  but  he  explained  later  to 
Eckermann  that  he  had  no  hatred  towards  the  French. 
In  all  wars  there  have  been  poets  who  have  written  against 
the  enemy,  but  usually  this  kind  of  poetry  has  been  of  an 
inferior  order.  It  finds  its  own  tomb  in  a  poem  like  the 
famous  Hymn  of  Hate  by  Lissauer  in  the  late  world  war. 

Nothing  in  literature  illustrates  more  the  belief  in  the 


magical  power  of  poetry  than  the  chapters  in  the  Book  of 
Numbers  dealing  with  the  effort  of  the  Moabite  King 
Balak  to  get  Balaam  to  curse  the  children  of  Israel.  Balak 
believed  that  these  curses  would  help  him  defeat  the  He- 
brews. But  instead  Balaam  blessed  them,  unwillingly, 
saying  that  he  could  but  utter  the  words  God  put  in  his 
mouth,  for  the  inspiration  of  the  poet  came  to  him  always 
from  hidden  forces.  He  reached  to  ecstasy  every  time 
he  spoke. 

Arabic  poetry  then  deals  in  intricate  forms  conveying 
ecstasy,  with  all  the  stock  themes  of  poetry,  but  especially 
with  love. 

The  similarities  between  Biblical  Hebrew  poetry  and 
Pre-islamic  Arabic  poetry  have  been  touched  upon  by 
Dr.  George  A.  Smith  in  his  The  Early  Poetry  of  Israel 
and  by  Thomas  Chenery  in  his  excellent  introduction  to 
his  translation  of  Hariri's  Assemblies.  Participators  in 
various  military  events  themselves  composed  the  poems  in 
which  they  told  of  their  exploits,  as  you  may  note  by 
comparing  the  Muallaqat  with  the  songs  of  Miriam  and 
Deborah.  There  was  the  same  interest  in  nature  as  you 
may  see  by  comparing  descriptions  from  the  Psalms  and 
Job  to  that  of  the  thunderstorm  by  Imru'ul  Qays  in  the 
Muallaqat.  The  poetry  of  both  nations  was  often 
nomadic,  the  product  of  the  influences  of  the  desert.  Both 
nations  recorded  personal  emotions,  springing  from  tribal 
events. 

There  was  also  the  same  tendency  in  both  nations  to 
utter  ecstatically  sententious  and  moral  sayings.  Though 
only  one  poem  in  the  Muallaqat,  that  by  Zuhayr,  really 
moralizes,  the  later  Arabic  poets  always  loved  to  give 
vent  to  reflections,  proverbs,  words  of  wisdom.  Two  of 
the  best  Arabic  poems  of  the  kind  are  the  improvisations 
ol  the  vagabond  Abu  Zayd  in  the  i  ith  and  soth  Assembly 


216         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

of  Hariri's  Assemblies.  Two  finer  poems  which  moralize 
without  losing  their  poetic  quality  can  scarcely  be  found 
in  Arabic  literature.  Most  of  the  reflective  poetry  of 
those  two  pessimistic,  skeptic  poets  Abu  1'Atahiya  and 
Abu  '1  Ala  al  Maarri  are  of  this  kind.  The  ecstatic  po- 
tentiality in  reflection  is  seen  in  Job,  Proverbs  and  Ec- 
clesiastes. 

The  chief  phase  of  Pre-islamic  poetry  that  will  not 
appeal  to  us  is  in  the  great  body  of  martial  verse  where 
love  of  robbery  and  bloodshed,  cruelty,  revenge  and 
hatred  are  fostered.  The  Bedouins  gave  us  a  transcript 
of  their  life.  They  dwelt  in  their  vices  with  frankness, 
but  they  tried  to  make  virtues  out  of  them.  We  cannot 
blame  them  for  not  having  our  ideals  of  peace  and  it  is 
also  doubtful  if  cruelties  in  their  warfare  were  greater 
than  those  in  our  own  day. 

The  poets  before  Islam  sang  about  revenge  and  fighting 
in  a  way  that  even  nauseates  us.  The  martial  spirit  in 
the  Romance  of  Antar  has  made  it  less  popular  with  us 
than  The  Arabian  Nights,  for  the  former  work  is  an 
account  of  the  fighting  Arabs  of  the  desert,  and  the  latter 
deals  largely  with  the  merchant  Arabs  of  the  city.  Even 
the  great  and  beautiful  Song  of  Vengeance  by  the  Arab 
Robin  Hood,  Ta  abbata  Sharran,  of  which  we  have  a 
second  hand  translation  by  Goethe,  and  fine  verse  versions 
by  R.  A.  Nicholson,  Literary  History  of  the  Arabs  (pp. 
98-100),  and  by  Charles  J.  Lyall  on  pages  48-49  of  Arabic 
Poetry,  is  very  cruel. 

Pre-islamic  poetry  reeks  too  much  with  the  ecstasy  of 
delight  to  shed  blood,  in  which  tendency  it  of  course  dif- 
fers little  from  the  early  poetry  of  other  nations.  How- 
ever, the  remarkable  thing  is  that  the  hearts  of  these  war- 
riors possessed  so  many  fine  feelings.  One  of  the  noblest 
descriptions  of  woman  is  by  a  companion  of  the  brigand 


LOVE  ECSTASY  IN  ARABIAN  POETRY  217 

Sharran,  from  the  Mufaddaliyyat,  a  translation  of  which 
appears  on  pages  81-82  of  Lyall's  volume. 

The  Arabian  poetry  which  has  been  most  frequently 
translated  and  written  about  in  English  is  Pre-islamic 
poetry.  In  especial,  the  Mudlaqat,  or  •  the  seven  so- 
called  suspended  poems,  has  been  translated  several  times- 
Sir  William  Jones  made  the  first  translation  in  prose  in 
the  eighteenth  century.  In  modern  times  we  have  had 
several  translations,  one  by  Wilfrid  Blunt  and  his  wife. 
There  has  been  considerable  support  for  the  critical  view 
that  these  poems  represent  the  highest  achievement  of 
Arabic  poetry,  both  among  Arabs  themselves  and  Aryan 
critics.  Imru'ul  Qays,  who  flourished  in  the  sixth  century 
A.D.,  is  the  most  famous  of  the  poets  in  the  collection, 
and  is  regarded  by  many  as  the  greatest  Arabian  poet. 
R.  A.  Nicholson  and  Clement  Huart  have  given  accounts 
of  the  Muallaqat  in  their  histories  of  Arabic  Literature. 
Professor  Mackail  has  published  in  his  Oxford  Lectures 
an  essay  on  these  odes  and  D.  Noldeke  has  given  us  a  full 
study  of  them  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannic  a.  I  shall 
not  therefore  dwell  on  them  except  to  say  that  they  were 
collected  in  the  eighth  century  by  Hammad,  and  that  most 
of  these  poems  deal  with  warriors  rather  than  lovers, 
though  they  contain  love  laments. 

Nicholson  and  others  regard  the  Abbasid  period 
as  the  great  era  of  Arabic  poets.  This  period*  extended 
from  the  accession  of  SafFah  in  749  to  the  de- 
struction of  Bagdad  by  the  Mongols  in  1258.  Abu  Nu- 
was,  Abu  '1  Atahiya,  Mutanabbi  and  Abu  '1  Ala  al  Maarri 
are  recognized  by  Nicholson  as  the  Gods  of  Arabian  poetry, 
and  we  in  our  smug  inordinate  satisfaction  with  Aryan 
poetry,  have  not  even  translated  or  paid  attention  to  them- 
Abu  Nuwas,  who  flourished  in  the  early  part  of  the  ninth 
century,  sang  of  love  and  wine  and  led  a  riotous  and  im- 


218         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

moral  life,  and  is  familiar  to  the  reader  of  the  Arabian 
Nights  as  the  jester  of  Harun  al  Rashid.  His  Divan 
is  to  be  found  in  German  but  not  in  English.  Many 
consider  him  the  greatest  of  the  Arabian  poets.  Abu  '1 
Atahiya  is  a  pessimist  and  philosophical  poet  thinker. 
He  was  imprisoned  by  Harun  for  having  ceased  writing 
love  poetry  because  he  was  hopelessly  in  love  with  a  slave 
girl.  He  described  common  emotions  and  used  simple 
language  instead  of  far-fetched  conceits.  Mutanabbi  in 
the  tenth  century  was  the  most  famous  of  all  the  Arabian 
poets,  but  he  is  criticized  by  many  for  his  rhetoric  and 
ornament.  He  is  the  master  of  the  grand  style.  Then  we 
have  in  the  next  century  the  great  Abu  '1  Ala  al  Maarri, 
who  has  been  called  the  predecessor  of  Omar  Khayyam. 
Bauerlein  and  Rihani  have  translated  some  of  his  verses 
into  English,  and  Bauerlein  has  also  devoted  a  little  volume 
to  him  in  The  Wisdom  of  the  East  series.  Abu  '1  Ala  is 
the  most  modern  of  the  Arabian  poets.  He  was  a  free- 
thinker and  a  pessimist  and  his  Luzumiyyat  reads  like  a 
work  of  one  of  our  rational  poets.  It  attacks  all  religion 
including  Islam.  His  letters  have  been  translated  into 
English  by  Professor  Margoliouth.* 

I  have  already  several  times  mentioned  the  most 
famous  Arabic  work  next  to  the  Koran,  the  Maqamat  or 
Assemblies,  by  Hariri  (1054-1122).  The  tales  have  been 
called  immoral,  but  Abu  Zayd  interests  us  as  Gil  Bias 
does.  The  work  written  in  rhymed  prose  is  most  fasci- 
nating reading.  There  is  a  complete  translation  of  this 
by  T.  Chenery  and  F.  Steingass,  1867-1898. 

The  Arabian  Nights  is  the  best  known  Arabic  produc- 
tion to  English  speaking  people  and  is  full  of  poetry, 

*The   best   account   and   translations   of   Abu   '1   Ala   are   in 
Nicholson's  Studies  in  Islamic  Poetry,  recently  published. 


LOVE  ECSTASY  IN  ARABIAN  POETRY  219 

not  only  in  the  interspersed  verses,  but  in  the  stories 
themselves. 

The  Romance  of  Antar,  from  which  I  quoted  a  poem,  is 
said  to  have  been  written  by  a  poet  and  philologist  in  the 
reign  of  Harun  al  Rashid.  The  work  is  long  and  a 
few  abridged  volumes  were  translated  into  English  by 
Terrick  Hamilton  in  1819  and  1820. 

Then  there  is  the  great  poet  of  Cordova,  Ibn  Zaydun 
of  the  eleventh  century,  whose  love  for  the  princess 
Wallada  has  made  him  celebrated.  Here  is  a  beautiful 
love  poem  translated  by  Nicholson,  Literary  History  of 
the  Arabs,  pp.  425-426 : 

To-day  my  longing  thoughts  recall  thee  here ; 
The  landscape  glitters,  and  the  sky  is  clear. 
So  feebly  breathes  the  gentle  zephyr's  gale, 
In  pity  of  my  grief  it  seems  to  fail. 
The  silvery  fountains  laugh,  as  from  a  girl's 
Fair  throat  a  broken  necklace  sheds  its  pearls. 
Oh,  'tis  a  day  like  those  of  our  sweet  prime, 
When,  stealing  pleasure  from  indulgent  Time, 
We  played  midst  flowers  of  eye-bewitching  hue, 
That  bent  their  heads  beneath  the  drops  of  dew. 
Alas,  they  see  me  now  bereaved  of  sleep ; 
They  share  my  passion  and  with  me  they  weep. 
Here  in  her  sunny  haunt  the  rose  blooms  bright, 
Adding  new  lustre  to  Aurora's  light; 
And  waked  by  morning  beams,  yet  languid  still, 
The  rival  lotus  doth  his  perfume  spill. 
All  stirs  in  me  the  memory  of  that  fire 
Which  in  my  tortured  breast  will  ne'er  expire. 
Had  death  come  ere  we  parted,  it  had  been 
The  best  of  all  days  in  the  world,  I  ween ; 
And  this  poor  heart,  where  thou  art  every  thing, 
Would  not  be  fluttering  now  on  passion's  wing. 
Ah,  might  the  zephyr  waft  me  tenderly, 
Worn  out  with  anguish  as  I  am,  to  thee ! 
O  treasure  mine,  if  lover  e'er  possessed 
A  treasure !  O  thou  dearest,  queenliest ! 


220         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Once,  once,  we  paid  the  debt  of  love  complete 
And  ran  an  equal  race  with  eager  feet. 
How  true,  how  blameless  was  the  love  I  bore, 
Thou  hast  forgotten ;  but  I  still  adore ! 

Nor  have  I  sounded  the  depth  of  Arabian  poetry. 
Their  greatest  mystic  poet  was  Umar  Ibn  ul  Farid,  who 
flourished  between  1181  and  1235,  and  whose  work  is 
full  of  fervid  and  inspired  poetry. 

There  is  also  Baha  ad  Din  Zuhayr  (d.  1258  A.D.),  the 
love  poet  of  Egypt,  whose  complete  poems  have  been 
translated  into  English  by  Edward  H.  Palmer. 

One  of  the  great  products  of  Arabic  culture  was  its 
work  in  literary  criticism.  While  it  is  the  fashion  to-day 
to  lay  much  stress  on  the  Italian  and  English  studies  of 
Aristotle's  Poetics  in  the  Renaissance  and  Elizabethan 
periods  respectively,  the  Arabs  were  writing  learnedly  on 
poetry  centuries  before  they  read  the  Poetics.  They 
made  a  specialty  of  the  literature  called  the  Adab,  or 
belles  lettres  made  up  of  criticism,  quotation  and  rhetoric. 

The  criticism  of  poetry  flourished  among  the  Arabs  in 
the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries  A.D.  as  a  higher  art  than  it 
did  in  the  sixteenth  century  among  the  Italians  and  Eng- 
lish. Unfortunately  none  of  these  works  have  been  trans- 
lated; there  is  not  even  a  reference  to  their  influence  in 
Saintsbury's  History  of  Criticism  in  Europe.  The  Arabs 
had  so  many  poets  even  in  Pre-islamic  times  in  the  sixth 
century  that  interest  in  preserving  this  poetry  gave  rise 
later  to  anthologists  who  made  collections.  These  an- 
thologists commented  on  the  poetical  work  and  compared 
it  with  that  of  later  periods,  and  with  that  of  their  con- 
temporaries. 

Ibn  Yunus  in  the  early  part  of  the  tenth  century  trans- 
lated Aristotle's  Poetics  into  Arabic  and  the  Europeans 
learned  of  Aristotle's  work  from  the  Arabs  several  cen- 


LOVE  ECSTASY  IN  ARABIAN  POETRY  221 

turies  later.  But  the  best  Arabic  works  on  the  art  of 
poetry  had,  however,  already  been  produced,  presenting 
original  ideas  gleaned  from  the  study  of  the  great  Ara- 
bian poets,  and  illustrated  by  examples  from  them.  The 
Arabic  critics  did  not  go  to  the  Greek  and  Roman  poems 
(which  they  considered  cold  besides  their  own)  as  did  the 
Italians  and  English  to  study  the  nature  of  poetry.  The 
Arabs  studied  Greek  science,  medicine,  and  philosophy, 
but  not  Greek  poetry.  Books  on  prosody  and  poetry  ap- 
peared after  the  founding  of  the  system  of  Arabic  meters 
by  Khalil  b.  Ahmad  in  the  eighth  century.  There  were 
also  the  two  celebrated  schools  of  grammarians  at  Basra 
and  Kufa,  soon  to  merge  in  the  school  of  Bagdad.  Never 
before  had  the  art  of  poetry  and  criticism  flourished  so 
thrivingly  and  displayed  a  so  generally  high  order  as 
among  the  Arabs  in  the  ninth,  tenth,  eleventh  and  twelfth 
centuries.  A  faint  idea  of  the  great  number  of  Arabian 
grammarians,  critics  and  poets  may  be  gleaned  by  perus- 
ing the  biographical  dictionary  of  Ibn  Khallikan,  who 
flourished  in  the  thirteenth  century.  This  work,  which 
contains  only  a  partial  list,  has  been  compared  to  the  Life 
of  Johnson,  by  Boswell  (Lucas  called  him  a  Bagdad  Bos- 
well),  and  to  Plutarch's  Lives. 

While  Europe  was  plunged  in  ignorance  and  barbarism, 
the  great  Arab  poets  and  critics  were  achieving  work  that 
belongs  to  the  best ;  but  alas,  the  very  names  which  rank 
so  high  among  them  are  unknown  to  most  people.  We 
let  them  slumber  in  the  difficult  Arabic.  We  translate  the 
Chinese  and  Japanese  poems  probably  more  out  of  fad- 
dish reasons  than  of  a  true  love  of  their  poetry,  but  we 
ignore  the  Arabians. 

The  Arab  example  contradicts  the  famous  platitude 
that  great  epochs  of  creative  literary  work  are  not  ages  of 
literary  criticism.  It  is  just  the  reverse.  Good  criticism 


222         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

is  never  so  conspicuous  as  in  ages  of  poetry,  for  there  is 
such  interest  in  poetry  as  to  provoke  literary  discussion, 
then  more  so  than  ever.  The  best  criticism  of  poetry  ap- 
peared in  England  in  the  great  age  of  Wordsworth  and 
Byron.  The  Arabic  grammarians  and  anthologists  began 
their  work  about  the  middle  of  the  eighth  century.  In- 
credible stories  are  told  of  their  feats  of  memory  for 
verse,  in  the  art  of  improvisation,  in  skill  in  manipulating 
the  language.  They  regarded  the  letters  of  their  alphabet 
as,  human  beings,  just  as  the  Hebrew  Cabbalists  treated 
their  alphabetical  letters  as  angels. 

To  name  even  the  most  important  of  grammarians, 
anthologists,  philologists,  critics  of  Arabia,  is  to  call  a 
long  list.  Even  historians,  philosophers,  scientists  and 
theologians  entered  the  field  of  poetic  criticism.  Every 
one  quoted  the  poets,  consequently  poetry  was  bound  up 
not  only  with  criticism  but  with  Arabic  thought.  One 
of  the  most  quoted  Arabic  critics  is  Ibn  Rashiq,  of  the 
eleventh  century,  whose  Umda  or  Pillar  of  the  Art  of 
Poetry  is  mentioned  often  by  Ibn  Khaldun,  the  historian. 
The  latter  also  names  four  great  Arabic  writers  of  Adab, 
Ibn  Qutayba's  Accomplishments  of  the  Secretary  (Ibn 
Qutayba's  Book  of  Poetry  and  Poets  is  more  often  cited 
by  other  writers  than  the  Accomplishments  of  the  Secre- 
tary}, Jahiz's  Book  of  Eloquence  and  Exposition,  al  Mu- 
barrad's  Perfect,  all  of  the  ninth  century,  and  in  Spaii 
Abu  AH  al  Qali's  Curious  Notions,  of  the  tenth  centur) 
whose  Book  of  Dictations,  however,  is  better  known. 

Among  the  writers  on  poetry  in  the  manner  of  the 
Arabs  was  the  Hebrew  poet  and  critic,  Moses  Ibn  Ezra 
author  of  the  Conversations  and  Recollections,  which  was 
the  first  study  of  the  kind  in  Hebrew  and  the  first  criti- 
cism of  the  poetry  of  the  Bible  from  an  aesthetic  point  of 
view.  Among  Arab  critics  to  whom  he  is  indebted,  be 


LOVE  ECSTASY  IN  ARABIAN  POETRY  223 

sides  the  aforementioned  Ibn  Qutayba  and  Ibn  Rashiq, 
are  the  first  book  in  Arabian  Poetics  proper,  by  the 
Caliph,  Ibn  ul  Mutazz,  of  the  latter  part  of  the  ninth  cen- 
tury, a  work  by  Qudama,  and  Ornaments  of  Conversa- 
tion, by  Al  Hatimi,  both  of  the  tenth  century. 

There  are  many  other  works  that  were  well  known  and 
often  cited  in  Arabic  literary  circles.  I  shall  name  only 
Tha'alibi  (died  1037),  whose  Solitaire  of  Time  had  many 
continuations  by  later  critics,  and  the  famous  Fihrist  or 
Index  by  the  Bookseller,  Ibn  Ishaq  (tenth  century),  one 
of  the  sections  of  which  deal  with  poetry. 

Ibn  Khaldun,  the  historian,  and  a  contemporary  of 
Chaucer  in  the  thirteenth  century,  devoted  a  number  of 
chapters  to  poetry  in  the  introduction  to  his  famous 
history. 

As  a  specimen  of  poetic  criticism  among  the  Arabs  and 
as  a  corrective  to  the  general  impression  that  ornament 
and  not  ecstasy  counted  in  Arabic  poetry,  I  give  the  fol- 
lowing English  rendering  from  De  Slane's  French  trans- 
lation of  Khaldun's  Prolegomena: 

One  of  the  conditions  imposed  in  the  use  of  this  art 
(of  ornament)  is  that  the  embellishments  appear  in  the 
piece  quite  naturally,  without  the  author's  labor  in  search- 
ing for  them  and  without  his  being  anxious  about  the 
effect  that  they  should  produce.  If  they  present  them- 
selves naturally,  there  is  nothing  to  object  to  them,  for 
not  being  purposely  introduced,  they  save  the  subject  the 
fault  of  lapsing  into  barbarism ;  but  when  one  imposes 
upon  himself  the  task  of  painfully  seeking  these  embel- 
lishments, he  is  led  to  neglect  the  principles  which  rule  the 
combination  of  words,  which  are  the  foundation  of  the 
discourse;  this  injures  the  principles  of  clearness  of  ex- 
pression and  causes  the  distinctness  and  precision  which 
ought  to  characterize  the  discourse,  to  disappear ;  nothing 
then  remains  but  the  embellishments.  .  .  .  Another  con- 
dition which  should  be  observed  in  regard  to  the  science 


224         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

of  ornaments  is  to  make  a  rare  use  of  it;  that  the  poet 
apply  it  to  two  or  three  verses  of  a  poem ;  that  will  suffice 
to  give  elegance  and  luster  to  the  entire  piece.  The  too 
frequent  use  of  embellishments  is  a  fault,  as  Ibn  Rashiq 
and  others  have  said.  .  .  .  All  that  we  pointed  out  shows 
that  the  artificial  discourse  (or  style),  when  one  writes  it 
laboriously  and  as  a  task,  is  inferior  in  merit  to  the  nat- 
ural discourse,  for  one  neglects  thereby  too  many  funda- 
mental principles  of  the  art  of  speaking  well.  I  leave  it 
to  good  taste  to  judge  thereof. 

The  Arabs  then  regarded  poetry  as  ecstatic  utterances 
emanating  from  the  unconscious,  embodying  an  idea,  and 
produced  with  little  ornament.  This  despite  their  belief 
that  poetry  must  use  the  established  forms  of  metre  and 
figures.  It  is  unfortunate  that  even  to  the  present  day 
these  old  forms  are  used,  while  Turkish  literature  has 
only  very  recently  been  emancipated  from  them.  Even 
Arabian  political  articles  are  to-day  written  in  rhymed 
prose.  But  as  Chenery  said,  the  history  of  rhymed  prose 
is  the  history  of  Arabic  literature.  Rhyme  is  natural  to 
the  Arabic  language,  whereas  it  is  really  foreign  to  the 
English  language. 

If  European  civilization  could  free  itself  from  the 
prejudices  against  Semitic  and  Asiatic  culture,  and  if  the 
universities,  instead  of  studying  minutely  the  barren 
medieval  literature  of  Europe  before  the  Renaissance, 
would  give  fuller  courses  in  the  poetry  of  the  Arabs, 
Hebrews,  Persians  and  Turks,  the  exchange  would  be 
salutary.  The  only  Asiatic  literature  that  Europe  made 
an  attempt  to  study  was  that  of  the  Hindus,  and,  as 
has  been  suspected  by  many,  this  may  have  been  done 
chiefly  out  of  Aryan  vanity,  to  show  that  the  earliest 
culture  was  not  Semitic  but  Aryan,  and  thus  related  to 
European  culture.  But  the  fact  remains  that  the  poetry 
of  these  four  nations  mentioned  is  far  superior  to  that 


LOVE  ECSTASY  IN  ARABIAN  POETRY  225 

of  medieval  Europe.  The  two  nations  who  were  not 
Semitic,  the  Persians  and  the  Ottoman  Turks,  are  almost 
wholly  imbued  with  the  Semitic  spirit.  Persian  poetry 
grew  out  of  Arabic  poetry,  just  as  Ottoman  poetry  de- 
veloped from  Persian  poetry.  There  is  nothing  of  the 
Tartar  spirit  at  all  in  Ottoman  poetry,  as  Gibb  has  pointed 
out. 

That  poetry  is  subjective,  lyric,  ecstatic,  is  best  seen  in 
Oriental  poetry.  It  will  repay  the  lover  of  literature  to 
read  such  works  as  Browne's  Literary  History  of  Persia, 
Gibb's  History  of  Ottoman  Poetry,  and  Nicholson's  Lit- 
erary History  of  the  Arabs.  As  for  Post-biblical  poetry 
of  the  Hebrews,  so  rich  in  patriotic  and  moral  fervor, 
and  in  hymns  and  elegies,  there  are  articles  in  the  Jewish 
Encyclopedia,  chapters  in  Graetz's  History  of  the  Jews 
and  works  on  various  phases  of  it  by  numerous  writers. 

To  the  Oriental,  poetry  is  ecstasy  first  and  last,  and  this 
is  all  the  more  remarkable  since  their  poetry  is  so  much 
more  ornate,  artificial,  figurative,  and  patterned  than 
European  poetry.  It  is  sensuous,  passionate  but  not 
"simple."  Its  chief  inferiority  to  European  poetry,  how- 
ever, springs  from  its  lack  in  intellectual  profundity,  and 
its  severance  (except  in  the  Prophets  of  the  Bible)  from 
problems  of  social  justice. 


CHAPTER  XII 

CONCLUSION 

I  HAVE  not  tried  to  present  a  theory  of  poetry,  so  much 
as  to  point  out  certain  features  of  a  particular  kind  of 
writing  which  I  have  called  the  literature  of  ecstasy.  It 
has  developed  that  I  really  used  the  word  ecstasy  in  the 
same  sense  that  the  other  critics  have  employed  the  terms 
unconscious,  imagination,  poetry.  I  think  I  have  shown 
that  the  literature  of  ecstasy  even  when  in  prose  is 
synonymous  with  poetry  as  understood  by  Shakespeare 
when  he  used  "frenzy"  and  "things  unknown"  in  refer- 
ence to  the  poet.  I  have  also,  I  hope,  pointed  out  that  an 
ecstatic  presentation  of  intellectual  and  moral  ideas  re- 
sults often  in  a  great  poetic  product. 

I  do  not  purpose  to  teach  any  one  how  to  write  poetry 
or  the  literature  of  ecstasy.  If  my  views  have  any  value, 
it  lies  in  helping  us  recognize  the  literature  of  ecstasy.  It  is 
in  aiding  us  to  eliminate  much  trivial,  flimsy,  unecstatic 
free  verse  and  regular  verse  from  the  sphere  of  poetry. 
It  lies  in  inducing  us  to  include  much  emotional  prose  as 
poetry.  Since  men,  however,  entertain  so  many  diverse 
views  on  life,  morals,  and  social  justice,  it  can  never  be 
possible  for  critics  to  agree  as  to  which  literature  of 
ecstasy  is  the  best,  for  its  value  is  affected  by  the  question 
as  to  the  truth  of  the  ideals  therein  maintained.  Every 
one  thinks  that  he  can  determine  what  are  the  merits  of 
a  book.  Those  who  have  mastered  the  rules  of  prosody 
are  certain  that  they  can  judge  the  qualities  of  poetry. 
But  only  those  critics  can  recognize  great  poetry  whose 
moral,  intellectual  and  aesthetic  faculties  are  well  balanced. 

226 


CONCLUSION  227 

It  is  true  that  the  master  of  rules  of  prosody  can  tell 
whether  a  verse  poem  follows  the  rules,  he  can  perceive 
whether  the  rhymes  are  false,  whether  the  rhythm  is 
regular,  even  whether  the  figures  are  not  far  fetched  and 
whether  the  diction  is  good ;  and  a  commonplace  mind  may 
recognize  the  ordinary  literature  of  ecstasy.  But  the 
chief  obstacle  to  recognizing  poetry  is  that  most  people 
derive  their  views  as  to  what  poetry  is  from  rules  formu- 
lated from  the  writings  of  older  poets.  If  the  great  poets 
of  the  world  had  never  used  a  patterned  form,  there  would 
have  been  no  text  books  welding  poetry  and  versification 
together.  A  great  poet  not  only  creates  his  own  forms 
but  displays  individuality  in  the  choice  of  views  and 
ideas.  When  he  becomes  recognized,  new  rules  are 
formulated  from  his  work,  and  are  even  used  as  a  fetter 
to  bind  later  poets  and  critics. 

Anthologists  have  often  been  of  great  value  in  choos- 
ing for  us  the  literature  of  ecstasy  as  written  by  so-called 
minor  and  popular  poets  who  have  taken  no  position  in 
the  history  of  the  world's  literature.  A  poet,  however, 
is  not  great  because  he  has  succeeded  in  producing  a  few 
pieces  that  belong  truly  to  the  literature  of  ecstasy.  Nor 
does  a  poet  who  once  held  a  high  place  in  the  list  of 
poets  and  has  subsequently  lost  it  by  the  vicissitudes  of 
taste  or  circumstances  or  by  the  change  in  ideas,  cease 
being  a  poet  to  us  if  he  has  written  poems  that  belong 
to  the  literature  of  ecstasy.  No  one,  for  example,  to-day 
regards  Jean  Ingelow  as  a  great  poet,  but  the  anthologists 
who  select  her  When  Sparrows  Build  or  High  Tide  on 
the  Coast  of  Lincolnshire,  justly  accept  these  poems  as 
poetry.  It  will  astonish  many  people  who  will  take  the 
trouble  to  go  through  the  work  of  some  so-called  minor 
poets,  say  Philip  Bourke  Marston,  to  find  gems  here  and 
there  that  properly  are  part  of  the  literature  of  ecstasy. 


228         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

My  theory,  I  hope,  also  helps  us  to  determine  when 
certain  branches  of  literature  are  poetry  and  when  they 
are  not.  For  example,  there  has  always  been  a  dispute 
as  to  whether  oratory,  comedy  and  satire  are  really  po- 
etry. There  have  been  critics  who  would  not  admit  that 
these  species  of  writing  are  properly  poetry,  even  in 
verse ;  on  the  other  hand,  other  critics  have  asserted  that 
they  are  poetry. 

When,  if  ever,  is  oratory  poetry?  Whenever  ecstasy 
and  not  rhetoric  characterizes  it,  when  universal  themes 
of  permanent  interest  and  not  arguments  on  a  temporal 
political  or  economic  question  are  its  substance,  then 
oratory  is  poetry.  A  plea  for  adherence  to  the  princi- 
ples of  a  political  party,  a  speech  about  an  economic 
problem,  is  not  as  a  rule  poetry.  But  why  are  some  of 
Moses's  speeches  and  the  orations  of  the  prophets  po- 
etry? Why  is  Mark  Antony's  verse  funeral  oration  on 
Caesar,  poetry?  Surely  not  because  of  the  verse?  Why 
are  some  of  Bossuet's  funeral  orations,  or  Thucydides's 
speech  in  prose,  poetry?  All  of  these  orations  belong  to 
the  domain  of  the  literature  of  ecstasy,  and  hence  are 
poetry. 

Nevertheless,  oratory  is  usually  hollow  and  bombastic. 
The  orator  makes  his  appeal  to  men  chiefly  by  rhetorical 
expression  of  commonplaces.  Eloquence  and  artifice 
count  here  more  than  thought  or  art.  The  less  intellect 
the  audience  has  the  better  does  the  orator  succeed.  Haz- 
litt  saw  the  limitations  of  oratory.  It  is  the  unthinking 
man  who  is  appealed  to  by  theatrical  effects.  The  orator 
must  be  commonplace,  he  cannot  deliver  profound  views. 
Some  of  the  great  orations  of  the  world's  literature  that 
are  poetry  are  those  that  were  never  really  delivered  but 
composed  by  the  historians,  like  the  emotional  speeches  in 
Thucydides  and  Tacitus.  You  can  find  poems  in  orations 


CONCLUSION  229 

by  Demosthenes  and  Cicero  also,  but  Fourth  of  July  ora- 
tions are  seldom  poetry.  Nor  is  the  Congressional  Record 
an  anthology  of  poetic  masterpieces.  In  a  footnote  in  his 
book  in  aesthetics,  The  Critique  of  Judgment,  Kant  has 
ably  elucidated  the  situation. 

I  must  admit  that  a  beautiful  poem  has  always  given 
me  a  pure  gratification;  whilst  the  reading  of  the  best 
discourse,  whether  of  a  Roman  orator  or  of  a  modern 
parliamentary  speaker  or  of  a  preacher,  has  always  been 
mingled  with  an  unpleasant  feeling  of  disapprobation,  of 
a  treacherous  art,  which  means  to  move  me  in  important 
matters  like  machines  to  a  judgment  that  must  lose  all 
weight  for  them  on  quiet  reflection.  Readiness  and  ac- 
curacy in  speaking  (which  taken  together  constitute  rhe- 
toric) belong  to  beautiful  art;  but  the  art  of  the  orator, 
the  art  of  availing  one's  self  of  the  weaknesses  of  men 
for  one's  own  design  (whether  these  be  well  meant  or 
even  actually  good,  does  not  matter)  is  worthy  of  no 
respect. 

We  must  not  confuse  eloquence  with  poetry,  though 
there  are  numerous  prose  pieces  which  though  eloquent 
are  yet  poetry.  Mere  wordiness  and  grandiloquence  may 
sound  like  ecstasy  yet  lack  that  quality. 

What  can  be  said  for  famous  passages  like  Burke's 
sympathetic  outburst  for  Marie  Antoinette?  I  see  no 
reason  why  we  should  not  call  this  poetry,  though  it  is 
not  poetry  of  a  high  order.  The  objection  to  it  is  that 
the  orator's  emotion  is  misdirected;  he  wastes  sympathy 
on  a  dead  queen  who  was  at  the  head  of  a  pernicious 
system,  and  ignores  the  miseries  of  the  thousands  of 
poor  Frenchmen.  To  that  extent  our  appreciation  of 
it  is  limited.  For  even  though  Burke  was  right  when  he 
lamented  that  the  age  of  chivalry  was  gone,  he  did  not 
state  that  the  time  of  exploitation  of  man  was  over,  and 


230         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

the  question  of  exploitation  is  probably  more  important 
than  that  of  chivalry. 

There  is  affinity  of  oratory  then  to  poetry,  as 
it  is  calculated  to  arouse  the  emotions  of  the  audience. 
But  the  political  oration  is  usually  not  poetry,  as  it  has 
a  tendency  to  the  ephemeral.  No  one  will  deny,  however, 
that  there  is  genuine  prose  poetry  in  orations  by  Demos- 
thenes, Cicero,  Burke,  Webster  and  Sumner. 

What  is  true  of  the  oration,  is  also  true  of  the  sermon. 
Sermons  like  those  of  Jeremy  Taylor  and  Sterne  contain 
poetry;  they  have  ecstasy. 

There  has  also  been  considerable  confusion  as  to  how 
much  poetry  exists  in  witty  and  humorous  writings  and 
in  comedy.  In  other  words,  the  connection  between  po- 
etry and  tears  is  well  established,  but  that  between  poetry 
and  laughter  is  vague.  We  may  say  that  most  of 
the  so-called  humorous  verse  is  not  poetry  at  all,  for  the 
merely  funny  does  not  merit  the  term  poetry.  Yet  there 
is  poetry  in  the  humorous  writings  of  men  like  Mark 
Twain  and  O.  Henry,  on  account  of  the  ecstatic  effect 
upon  the  reader.  In  reading  them  one  occasionally 
feels  impelled  to  tears,  while  moved  to  laughter.  A  mere 
witticism  is  not  poetry,  but  it  may  have  certain  qualities, 
such  as  a  bit  of  wisdom  conveying  ecstasy,  which  makes 
it  poetry.  The  wit  of  Heine  and  Voltaire  often  belongs 
to  this  class.  When  laughter  is  bound  up  with  a  pro- 
found idea  or  emotion,  the  work  expressing  the  laugh 
becomes  poetry.  However,  laughter  that  springs  from 
seeing  horse-play  or  the  mere  ludicrous,  is  not  poetry. 
But  the  portrayals  of  Sancho  Panza,  Falstaff  and  Parson 
Adams  are  poems. 

Meredith  has  presented  the  case  of  the  comic  spirit 
better  than  any  one  else.  He  says:  "The  comic  spirit  is 
not  hostile  to  the  sweetest  song  fully  poetic,"  and  he 


CONCLUSION  231 

shows  how  this  spirit  enters  the  work  of  Menander,  Aris- 
tophanes, Chaucer,  Terence,  Rabelais,  Shakespeare,  Cer- 
vantes, the  Restoration  Comedians,  Pope,  Moliere,  Field- 
ing, Smollett.  These  men  were  all  poets;  that  is,  they 
gave  us  poems  here  and  there  in  their  work.  'Meredith 
might  have  added  Dickens's  and  his  own  work  among 
comic  works  that  contain  poetry.  The  writers  of  comedy 
deal  with  feelings  and  emotions ;  most  of  them  were  men 
of  intellect  and  deep  feeling. 

In  a  passage  that  is  itself  a  poem,  Meredith  describes 
the  Comic  spirit,  which  he  recognized  as  allied  to  poetry. 
And  this  in  part  is  his  delineation  of  it: 

It  has  the  sage's  brows,  and  the  sunny  malice  of  the 
faun  lurks  at  the  corners  of  the  half-closed  lips  drawn  in 
an  idle  wariness  of  half  tension.  That  slim  feasting 
smile,  shaped  like  the  long-bow,  was  once  a  big  round 
satyr's  laugh,  that  flung  up  the  brows  like  a  fortress  lifted 
by  gunpowder.  The  laugh  will  come  again,  but  it  will  be 
of  the  order  of  the  smile,  finely  tempered,  showing  sun- 
light of  the  mind,  mental  richness  rather  than  noisy 
enormity.  Its  common  aspect  is  one  of  unsolicitous  ob- 
servation, as  if  surveying  a  full  field  and  having  leisure 
to  dart  on  its  chosen  morsels,  without  any  fluttering 
eagerness.  Men's  future  upon  earth  does  not  attract  it ; 
their  honesty  and  shapeliness  in  the  present  does;  and 
wherever  they  wax  out  of  proportion,  overblown,  af- 
fected, pretentious,  bombastical,  hypocritical,  pedantic, 
fantastically  delicate ;  whenever  it  sees  them  self-deceived 
or  hoodwinked,  given  to  run  riot  in  idolatries,  drifting 
into  vanities,  congregating  in  absurdities,  planning  short- 
sightedly, plotting  dementedly;  whenever  they  are  at 
variance  with  their  professions,  and  violate  the  unwritten 
but  perceptible  laws  binding  them  in  consideration  one  to 
another;  whenever  they  offend  sound  reason,  fair  justice; 
are  false  in  humility  or  mined  with  conceit,  individually 
or  in  the  bulk — the  Spirit  overhead  will  look  humanely 
malign  and  cast  an  oblique  light  on  them,  followed  by 
volleys  of  silvery  laughter.  That  is  the  Comic  Spirit. 


232         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

Closely  akin  to  the  comic  genius  is  that  of  satire.  Again 
satire  is  not  poetry,  except  when  presenting  ideas  and 
evoking  ecstasy.  There  used  to  be  a  distinct  form  of 
verse  poetry  called  the  satire,  but  there  is  often  more  or 
less  satire  in  the  works  of  novelists,  prose  dramatists  and 
essayists.  We  have  as  remnants  of  great  ancient  satire, 
poems  by  Horace  and  Juvenal,  tales  by  Apuleius  and 
Petronius  and  the  prose  dialogues  of  Lucian. 

The  great  masters  of  satire  in  modern  times  have  done 
their  work  in  prose  and  much  of  this  is  poetry.  We  think 
of  Rabelais,  Swift,  Voltaire,  Anatole  France  and  Samuel 
Butler.  There  is  plenty  of  poetry  in  the  Penguin  Island 
and  Erewhon,  for  example.  Modern  satire  is  prone  to  be 
more  poetical  than  the  ancient  verse  satire,  being  free 
from  coarseness  and  insult,  and  abounding  in  ideas.  Sa- 
tire is  not  mere  ranting  and  cursing,  but  a  keen  and  amus- 
ing way  of  showing  forth  human  follies.  You  find  it  in 
writers  as  different  as  Thackeray  and  Bernard  Shaw. 
Some  of  the  satire  in  Sinclair  Lewis's  novel  Main  Street 
is  excellent  poetry. 

The  highest  form  of  satire  in  all  the  prose  writers  is 
poetry,  as  much  so  as  if  put  in  the  heroic  couplets  of 
Pope  or  the  ottava  rima  of  Byron's  Vision  of  Last  Judg- 
ment. 

Satire  is  poetry  when  it  is  universal.  Much  of  the  old 
Arabic  poetry  was  satire  and  yet  genuine  poetry.  Pope's 
satires  are  poetry.  Laf cadio  Hearn  has  said  a  few  words 
on  the  subject  that  deserve  quoting : 

It  is  not  because  the  satires  (of  Pope)  were  true  pic- 
tures or  caricatures  of  any  living  person  in  particular, 
but  because  they  were  true  pictures  of  general  types  of 
human  weakness  which  have  always  existed,  which  exist 
to-day  and  which  will  exist  to-morrow.  (Life  and  Lit' 
erature,  p.  286.) 


CONCLUSION  233 

My  theory  of  poetry  as  ecstasy  also  seeks  to  do  away 
with  the  tendency  of  criticism  to  identify  poetry  with  the 
figure  of  speech  or  trope.  Even  when  it  has  lacked  the 
quality  which  fills  the  reader  with  ecstasy,  the  trope  has 
been  called  poetry  just  because  it  was  a  trope.  Imagery 
has  been  confused  with  imagination,  and  many  critics 
regard  that  as  poetry  which  makes  the  most  frequent  use 
of  unusual  figures  of  speech.  As  a  result,  some  of  the 
figures  of  speech  in  poetry  to-day  are  more  artificial  even 
than  those  found  in  Oriental  poetry.  But  no  one  can 
take  issue  with  the  beautiful  figures  such  as  appear  in 
the  Bible  and  in  Dante,  in  Shelley  and  Keats,  of  which 
the  essence  is  a  beautiful  flight  of  the  imagination  that 
fills  us  with  ecstasy.  But  when  freakish  tropes  take  the 
place  of  poetry  then  we  ought  to  rebel.  We  like  the 
figure  of  speech  introduced  occasionally  and  naturally, 
and  we  don't  want  the  figure  substituted  for  ideas  and 
emotions. 

One  critic  even,  Hudson  Maxim,  has  written  a  book  on 
The  Science  of  Poetry,  to  identify  poetry  with  the  figure 
of  speech.  In  spite  of  its  eccentricities,  and  its  attempt 
at  creation  of  new  terms  like  tro-tempotentry,  the  author 
recognizes  that  the  critics  confuse  poetry  with  metre, 
and  that  a  prose  writer  like  Robert  Ingersoll  was  a  poet. 
Any  one  who  had  read  Ingersoll's  prose  poems,  and  some 
of  his  orations  like  the  one  on  Liberty  in  Literature,  will 
recognize  this.  The  mistake  that  Maxim  makes  is 
to  call  poetry  defiantly  a  science,  and  then  to  define  it  as 
an  art  in  which  figures  of  speech  count  most.  To  create 
figures  of  speech  is  an  art.  Maxim's  definition  of  poetry 
is  "The  expression  of  insensuous  thought  in  sensuous 
terms  by  artistic  trope."  This  definition  covers  much  of 
ancient  poetry,  when  man  constantly  used  tropes  or 
figures  of  speech.  It  is  also  true  that  a  vast  body  of  the 


234        )THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

world's  poetry  is  full  of  tropes  like  metaphors  and  sim- 
iles. In  fact  even  our  free  verse  is  full  of  them.  But  the 
figure  of  speech  is  only  one  of  the  features  that  are  often 
present  in  poetry,  and  we  may  and  do  have  the  best  poetry 
without  it.  Its  frequent  use  has  become  a  nuisance;  it 
often  atones  for  lack  of  ideas,  it  is  often  a  sign  of  in- 
sincerity in  the  poet,  and  it  occasionally  bespeaks  a  raving 
imagination.  The  day  of  tropes  in  poetry  is,  in  spite  of 
the  Imagists,  on  the  decline.  You  find  none  of  them  in 
prose  plays  and  very  few  in  prose  fiction.  The  trope  was 
an  early  adornment  of  poetry  as  rhythm  was.  It  is  not  the 
essence  of  poetry,  though  it  often  beautifies  poetry. 

The  critics  do  not  accept  the  book  of  Maxim's  as  a 
true  statement  of  the  aims  of  poetry,  but  curiously  enough 
they  have  always  followed  the  views  in  his  book.  They 
have  confused  tropes,  or  figures  of  speech,  or  imagery 
with  imagination.  In  the  past  the  older  critics  fell  into 
this  error  and  when  they  spoke  of  imagination  they  were 
really  expatiating  on  imagery. 

One  of  the  best  English  critics  on  poetry,  Leigh  Hunt, 
sinned  in  this  direction.  Like  Wordsworth  and  Coler- 
idge he  made  much  of  the  distinction  between  imagination 
and  fancy.  Wordsworth  arranged  his  poems  in  an  edi- 
tion of  his  works  according  to  this  distinction.  Leigh 
Hunt  got  up  an  anthology  called  Imagination  and  Fancy, 
in  which  he  italicized  the  imaginative  and  the  fanciful 
passages,  and  to  which  he  prefixed  his  famous  essay  on 
"What  is  Poetry?"  Here  he  gave  his  definitions  of  and 
distinctions  between  imagination  and  fancy.  Half  the 
essay  is  devoted  really  to  identifying  them  with  figures 
of  speech.  The  only  difference  between  the  two  faculties 
was  that  fancy  was  a  lighter  play  of  the  imagination,  a 
distinction  really  utterly  trivial.  His  work  was  needed 
at  a  time  when  the  influence  of  Pope  still  ruled,  and 


CONCLUSION  235 

people  could  not  appreciate  the  rich  figures  in  Shelley 
and  Keats.  Pater  called  attention  to  the  real  distinction 
between  imagination  and  fancy  which  is  "between  higher 
and  lower  degrees  of  intensity  in  the  poet's  perception  of 
his  work,  and  in  his  concentration  of  himself  upon  his 
work."  For  all  purposes,  however,  fancy  may  be  in- 
cluded under  imagination.  Imagery  is  not  always  imagi- 
native, for  many  figures  of  speech  have  no  ecstatic 
quality. 

The  English  poets  who  were  regarded  as  most  gifted 
with  the  faculty  of  imagination  under  the  old  definition 
were  Milton  and  Spenser,  chiefly  for  their  bold  use  of 
supernatural  imagery.  Homer  and  Dante  were  always 
noted  for  their  beautiful  and  effective  similes,  and  they 
were  also  the  poets  of  the  imagination  par  excellence. 
The  confusion  of  imagery  with  imagination  resulted  in 
giving  figures  of  speech  a  significance  in  determining  the 
nature  of  poetry  that  it  did  not  merit.  Puttenham's  book 
in  the  Elizabethan  Age,  The  Arte  of  English  Poesie,  was 
half  employed  with  ornament  or  various  figures.  Oriental 
poetry  was  especially  figurative ;  all  Oriental  books  on  rhet- 
oric deal  extensively  with  figures  of  speech.  In  short  it 
was  taken  for  granted  by  all  critics  that  poetry  was  imagery 
or  figures  of  speech,  because  poetry  was  a  product  of  the 
imagination,  and  imagination  was  confused  with  imagery- 
It  is  true  that  it  is  the  function  of  the  imaginaton  to  com- 
pare, but  that  does  not  mean  that  it  is  nothing  more  than 
metaphor  or  simile.  The  tropes  were  more  natural  to 
early  man  who  personified  inanimate  things  and  always 
saw  resemblances  to  draw  from  in  nature.  To-day  the 
novelist  or  dramatist  introduces  his  metaphor  or  simile 
occasionally  or  naturally,  as  an  ornamental  touch  to  con- 
vey his  meaning  better.  Many  modern  versifiers  identify 
poetry  with  ornament  and  figures,  and  it  is  impossible  for 


236         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

them  to  write  a  poem  without  a  succession  of  figures. 
The  trope,  like  the  rhythm,  is  supposed  to  be  poetry. 
Hunt's  essay  defines  poetry  as  imaginative  passion  in 
versification.  He  can  conceive  of  no  passion  being  poetry 
unless  presented  in  metre  with  figures  of  speech.  His 
essay  is  divided  into  two  parts,  the  one  dealing  with 
imagination,  or  rather  imagery,  the  other  with  versifica- 
tion. Great  critic  that  he  was,  he  gave  us  one  of  the 
weakest  definitions  of  poetry  we  have. 

Any  one  who  has  read  Tom  Jones  receives  the  im- 
pression that  the  long  similes  Fielding  introduced  in  the 
Homeric  manner  were  written  half  in  jest  of  Homer,  his 
master. 

Yet  the  similes  of  the  epic  poets  are  poetry  because  they 
belong  to  the  literature  of  ecstasy.  If  the  trope  arouses 
our  emotions  it  is  poetry  not  because  it  is  an  ornament  but 
because  it  touches  our  unconscious  souls.  How  many 
tropes  do  you  find  in  the  prose  plays  of  Ibsen  or  the 
novels  of  Balzac?  The  ecstasy  manages  to  get  conveyed 
without  their  use.  It  was  the  writers  of  the  Romantic 
School  who  made  the  figure  of  speech  so  prominent. 
These  writers  who  sought  that  poetry  become  natural, 
did  much  to  make  it  artificial.  The  reason  that  such  great 
poets  as  Keats  and  Shelley  are  caviare  to  the  public  is 
that  they  are  rich  in  tropes.  The  eighteenth  century  poets 
were  said  to  be  destitute  of  imagination  chiefly  because 
they  did  not  make  frequent  use  of  the  metaphor.  The 
sport  of  critics  was  to  make  fun  of  the  peculiar  figures  of 
earlier  poets.  We  recall  Johnson's  dissecting  (often  with 
justice)  of  Cowley's  poems.  The  eighteenth  century  was 
right  in  one  respect ;  in  their  extreme  unimaginativeness, 
they  also  avoided  distorted  imagery.  Many  nineteenth 
century  poets  made  it  a  rule  never  to  call  a  thing  by  its 
proper  name,  but  by  some  epithet  containing  a  metaphor. 


CONCLUSION  237 

The  practice  is  still  persisted  in  by  many  of  our  poets, 
and  epithet-making  is  one  of  the  functions  of  many  poets- 
Even  prose  writers  like  Carlyle  were  especially  noted  for 
it,  but  his  epithets  were  often  truly  poetry. 

I  do  not  think  that  poetry  then  should  be  exclusively 
identified  with  tropes.  Take  a  much-praised,  in  my  opin- 
ion over-praised  sonnet  of  Keats,  On  Reading  Chapman's 
Homer.  The  whole  idea  of  this  poem  is  in  the  comparing 
his  first  discovery  of  Homer  to  the  feelings  of  the  man 
who  discovers  a  new  planet,  and  to  those  of  the  discov- 
erer of  the  Pacific  Ocean.  (He  confused  Cortes  with 
Balboa,  but  that  is  no  matter.)  Keats  conveys  to  us  his 
idea  by  two  similes.  But  can  this  poem  compare  with 
such  other  sonnets  of  his  where  he  lays  bare  his  inmost 
emotions,  where  the  figures  of  speech  are  not  the  poems 
as  here,  but  merely  come  in  incidentally;  where  he  has  a 
profound  idea,  emerging  as  the  result  of  a  great  passion  ? 

A  trope  then  is  poetry  only  when  arousing  ecstasy; 
such  poetry  is  not  of  the  highest  order. 

For  many  centuries  also,  that  alone  was  considered 
imaginative  literature  which  introduced  the  supernatural 
or  the  allegory.  Every  student  is  aware  how  much  these 
two  elements  figure  in  medieval  poetry.  All  recipes  for 
writing  poems  in  those  days  contained  provisions  about 
the  use  of  the  supernatural  and  allegory.  It  did  not  dawn 
on  critics  that  these  could  be  dispensed  with  in  a  great 
poetical  work.  Cervantes  laughed  away  the  use  of  the 
supernatural,  while  the  eighteenth  century  realistic  novel 
did  away  with  the  use  of  allegory  as  a  means  of  telling  a 
story.  Nothing  better  than  Poe's  remarks  has  been  said 
against  the  allegory  as  a  form  of  literary  expression.  Yet 
the  artificial  supernatural  agents  of  Ariosto  and  the  blood- 
less types  in  the  Faerie  Queene  were  held  to  be  the  truest 
creations  of  imagination.  The  vicious  practices  of  great 


238         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

geniuses,  often  due  to  the  examples  of  their  age,  are  in- 
strumental in  creating  misunderstanding  as  to  what  po- 
etry is,  on  account  of  the  inability  of  critics  to  praise 
them  for  their  real  beauties.  Often  the  passages  that 
have  been  praised  in  Homer,  Dante,  Virgil,  Milton,  Spen- 
ser, Ariosto,  are  not  the  ones  where  the  ecstasy  was  finest, 
but  those  where  the  "imaginative"  powers  of  the  poet 
were  thought  to  be  the  best  seen,  in  the  supernatural  and 
allegorical  portions.  Yet  who  can  doubt  that  the  great- 
ness of  Milton  is  more  apparent  when  he  talks  of  his 
blindness  than  when  he  gives  us  the  description  of  Lucifer 
with  the  many  artificial  figures?  Who  prefers  the  absurd 
descriptions  of  the  monsters  in  Dante's  Inferno  to  the 
passages  where  he  touches  on  his  own  sorrows  ? 

Another  misapprehension  about  the  nature  of  poetry 
lies  in  identifying  poetry  with  beauty.  Poetry  does  not 
necessarily  deal  with  the  conception  of  beauty  as  under- 
stood by  the  public  or  by  the  aestheticians,  though  the  de- 
scribing of  beautiful  objects  and  scenes  is  often  one  of  its 
most  important  themes.  Poetry  is  very  little  connected 
with  the  science  of  aesthetics,  for  you  may  know  all  about 
the  nature  and  laws  of  beauty,  the  effect  of  beauty  upon 
the  nature  of  man,  the  cause  of  his  love  for  beauty,  and 
yet  you  may  not  be  able  to  make  a  great  poem.  Croce  is 
as  much  mistaken  as  the  old  aestheticians  when  he  as- 
sumes one  must  study  the  science  of  aesthetics  to  appre- 
ciate poetry. 

Pater  dealt  a  death  blow  to  the  theory  that  aes- 
thetic, or  the  science  of  abstract  beauty,  helps  us  to  ap- 
preciate poetry.  The  critic  who  judges  a  poem  need 
know  nothing  about  abstract  beauty,  or  theories  of  es- 
thetic emotion.  There  is  little  of  value  to  be  given  us  by 
the  aesthetic  treatises  to  appreciate  a  play  of  Shakespeare 
or  Ibsen  or  a  novel  of  Balzac  or  Dickens.  Even  poets  like 


CONCLUSION  239 

Goethe,  Schiller  and  Lessing  became  absorbed  in  aestheti- 
cal  problems,  but  their  novels,  poems  and  plays  were 
written  by  putting  out  of  mind  metaphysical  disquisitions- 
How  are  you  enabled  to  appreciate  a  poem  by  knowing 
Kant's  erroneous  theory  that  the  appreciation  of  beauty 
is  impersonal  and  disinterested  ? 

Pater  in  his  Renaissance  took  the  position  that  poetry 
has  a  personal  message  for  us,  an  effect  on  us  individu- 
ally. We  cannot  learn  this  effect  by  following  metaphysi- 
cal discourses  on  the  relation  of  beauty  to  truth  or  ex- 
perience. In  his  Appreciations  in  the  essay  on  "Style" 
Pater  identifies  beauty  with  expression,  just  as  Croce  did 
after  him,  and  Lessing  and  Winckelmann  before  him. 
"All  beauty,"  wrote  Pater,  "is  in  the  long  run  only  fullness 
of  truth,  or  what  we  call  expression,  the  finer  accommo- 
dation of  speech  to  that  vision  within."  Here  we  have 
Croce's  conception  of  beauty,  the  word  defined  as  it  is 
being  understood  to-day.  It  is  in  this  sense  only,  the 
sense  of  the  most  adequate  expression  of  emotion,  that  the 
word  beauty  is  the  same  as  poetry,  or  literature  of 
ecstasy. 

Formerly  treatises  were  written  about  curved  lines, 
elegant  diction,  etc.,  on  the  theory  that  beauty  was  the 
subject  of  art.  But  a  peasant's  description  in  slang  of 
his  emotions,  an  author's  description  of  a  corpse  that  is 
rotting,  or  of  a  woman  giving  birth  to  a  child,  or  of  a 
man  going  mad,  or  of  a  hideous  degenerate  crime,  are  also 
beautiful,  for  since  expression  is  beauty,  the  narration  or 
description  of  the  ugly  is  a  work  of  art.  The  word  beauty 
in  its  popular  sense  no  longer  has  aesthetic  significance. 
Even  when  it  was  really  believed  that  art  dealt  with  beau- 
tiful objects  and  deeds,  the  aesthetician  had  to  admit  that 
there  was  nothing  beautiful  in  tragedies.  Nor  does  beauty 
mean  elegant  expression.  Many  stories  and  poems  in  slang 


240         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

and  dialect  belong  to  the  literature  of  beauty.  The  ex- 
pression of  emotions,  the  delineation  of  ideas,  the  draw- 
ing of  characters  is  beauty,  if  effectively  done.  The 
reader  need  not  have  what  the  old  aestheticians  called 
"taste";  he  must  only  respond  sympathetically  to  the 
ecstasy  of  the  author. 

I  have  made  no  attempt  to  set  confines  to  poetry,  for  no 
two  people  will  ever  agree  as  to  whether  a  literary  per- 
formance has  sufficient  ecstasy  or  whether  the  ecstasy  is 
of  a  high  strain  to  entitle  it  to  be  called  poetry,  but  I  be- 
lieve all  will  agree  that  ecstasy  is  necessary. 

I  believe,  however,  that  many  authoritative  works  and 
essays  on  Poetry,  from  Aristotle  to  our  own  day,  are 
obsolete.  I  shall  mention  only  Watts-Dunton's  article  on 
Poetry  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  which  has  fur- 
nished modern  critics  with  many  of  their  ideas.  The 
article  is  beyond  question  one  of  the  most  interesting 
produced  in  England  in  many  years.  Watts-Dunton  has 
a  true  conception  of  poetry  when  he  calls  it  the  product 
of  inspiration  or  concrete  and  artistic  expression  of  the 
human  mind  in  emotional  language.  He  believes,  how- 
ever, versification  is  necessary  to  all  poetry.  He  also 
makes  too  much  of  the  divisions  of  poetry  into  the  vari- 
ous orders,  like  epic,  lyric,  drama,  an  artificial  division 
adopted  by  all  critics  from  Aristotle.  Watts-Dunton's 
divisions  of  poets  into  those  with  an  absolute  or  personal 
vision  and  those  with  a  relative  vision,  is  arbitrary  and 
confused.  All  poets  are  personal,  and  even  when  they 
depict  other  people's  emotions  objectively,  the  product  is 
personal  because  touched  with  the  creator's  personality. 
He  is  also  too  much  under  the  influence  of  Hegel's 
Aesthetics. 

Watts-Dunton  could  not  understand  the  value  of  im- 
passioned prose  or  its  right  to  be  called  poetry.  He  once 


CONCLUSION  241 

said  to  William  Michael  Rossetti  that  the  latter's  reputa- 
tion as  a  critic  would  soon  vanish  because  of  his  admira- 
tion for  Whitman,  whom  he  himself  detested.  He  is 
blamed  with  having  done  much  to  quench  the  poetic  fire 
of  Swinburne's  muse,  for  whose  changed  attitude  to- 
wards Whitman  he  also  was  responsible.  He  had  no 
sympathy  with  the  poetry  that  had  a  social  message  and 
he  did  not  understand  its  effect  as  a  catharsis.  Watts- 
Dunton  cannot  remain  our  leading  authority  on  poetry. 
His  essay  belongs  to  the  extinct  class  of  Ars  Poetica,  with 
Boileau  and  Opitz. 

Ecstasy  is  then  the  substance  of  poetry,  and  there  are 
all  kinds  of  ecstasy,  from  a  very  exalted  to  a  primitive 
order.  It  includes  the  scientist's  or  philosopher's  passion 
for  knowledge,  the  idealist's  devotion  to  a  cause.  It  com- 
prehends the  warrior's  madness  for  battle,  the  patriot's 
ardor  to  die  for  his  country,  and  man's  submission  to  his 
God.  Ecstasy  holds  in  its  sway  the  man  who  is  moved 
by  reading  a  great  work  of  art.  It  sweeps  every  one 
who  is  in  the  throes  of  ambition.  Those  who  enjoy  na- 
ture, athletics,  and  games  are  in  the  throes  of  ecstasy. 
Those  who  are  bemoaning  the  death  of  one  they  love,  or 
rejoicing  in  the  emergence  of  dear  ones  from  illness  or 
danger,  those  who  take  pride  in  watching  their  children 
grow  up,  those  who  exult  in  the  pleasure  of  friendship, 
are  all  in  ecstasy. 

Every  one  who  builds  dreams  and  sees  visions  of  better 
things,  every  one  who  fulminates  against  ugliness  and 
wrong,  is  possessed  by  ecstasy.  Are  you  in  a  state  of 
rapture  because  your  love  is  returned,  or  in  one  of  de- 
spair, because  it  is  denied  ? — you  are  in  ecstasy.  Are  you 
brooding  over  a  sense  of  wrong  or  injustice,  are  you 
moved  by  the  spectacle  of  grief? — you  are  in  ecstasy. 
Ecstasy  is  intoxication,  in  a  good  and  in  a  bad  sense. 


242         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

The  origin  of  the  drinking-song  was  due  to  the  pleasant 
emotions  and  dreams  which  the  indulgence  in  alcohol 
aroused. 

The  mystic  who  thinks  he  is  in  personal  communion 
with  God,  the  lunatic  who  thinks  demons  are  prodding 
him,  the  spiritualist  who  imagines  he  talks  to  his  dead 
son,  the  child  who  is  in  communication  with  animals  and 
supernatural  creatures,  are  all  victims  of  some  form  of 
ecstasy. 

It  is  the  great  poet  who  knows  which  is  a  high  order  of 
ecstasy  to  choose,  what  attitude  to  take  towards  it  and  in 
what  words  and  form  to  convey  it. 

The  people  do  like  poetry  and  read  it,  but  are  unaware 
of  the  fact.  For  the  great  bulk  of  the  poetry  read  by  the 
people  is  the  prose  fiction  that  they  find  exciting  and 
stimulating.  This  fiction  is  usually  of  a  very  low  order. 
Nevertheless  good  poetry  is  to  be  found  in  the  simple 
and  emotional  prose  of  the  world,  in  the  dramatic  situa- 
tions in  novels,  in  the  best  passages  of  short  stories. 
Prose  poetry  is  the  most  democratic  and  natural  poetry, 
at  least  in  form,  and  you  can  rely  on  the  public  to  ap- 
preciate some  of  it. 

The  poetry  in  Dickens  is  democratic  poetry.  The 
drawing  of  such  characters  as  the  elder  Pegotty  and  Joe 
Gargery,  wherein  he  shows  the  noble  virtues  residing  in 
common  people,  is  poetry  that  the  public  can  appreciate. 

Poetry  cannot,  however,  always  be  democratic,  for 
when  it  deals  with  ideas  beyond  the  people,  such  as  you 
find  in  Nietzsche  and  Ibsen,  it  does  not  succeed  in  evoking 
the  intended  response  and  sympathy  from  the  public, 
which  rejects  such  ideas. 

So  when  we  hear  people  say  that  they  do  not  care  for 
poetry  we  see  that  they  mean  they  have  an  aversion  to 
verse  in  metre  or  rhyme  or  rhythm.  But  they  will  weep 


CONCLUSION  243 

as  they  read  of  the  death  of  Little  Nell  and  be  moved  by 
the  sorrows  of  Anna  Karenma,  and  be  stirred  by  the 
tragedy  of  Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles.  Like  the  gentle- 
man in  Moliere's  play  who  spoke  prose  all  his  life  with- 
out knowing  it,  these  readers  are  fond  of  poetry  without 
being  aware  of  the  fact.  Every  lover  of  good  literature 
appreciates  poetry  though  he  reads  no  verse.  He  is 
touched  by  the  ecstasy  which  tinctures  all  emotional  or 
beautiful  prose  literature.  Here  the  poetic  is  divested  of 
metaphors  and  rhythm  and  trappings  and  verbal  tricks; 
here  it  is  not  hidden  by  obscurity  or  spoiled  by  affectation. 
You  love  poetry  if  you  are  touched  by  the  lines  in 
Burke's  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,  where  the  great  orator, 
desolate  because  of  the  loss  of  his  son  and  embittered 
by  criticism  for  accepting  a  pension,  bares  the  state  of 
his  soul. 

The  storm  has  gone  over  me,  and  I  lie  like  one  of  those 
old  oaks  which  the  late  hurricane  has  scattered  upon  me. 
I  am  stripped  of  all  my  honors,  I  am  torn  up  by  the  roots, 
and  lie  prostrate  on  the  earth.  ...  I  am  alone.  I  have 
none  to  meet  my  enemies  in  the  gate.  Indeed,  my  Lord,  I 
greatly  deceive  myself  if  in  this  hard  season  I  would  give 
a  peck  of  refuse  wheat  for  all  that  is  called  fame  and 
honor  in  the  world.  ...  I  live  in  an  inverted  order. 
They  who  ought  to  have  succeeded  me  are  gone  before 
me.  They  who  should  have  been  to  me  as  posterity  are  in 
the  place  of  ancestors. 

You  are  hearing  Heine  the  poet  when  he  describes  in 
his  Confessions  his  feelings  as  he  lay  on  his  mattress 
grave,  no  less  than  when  you  peruse  his  love  woes  in 
verse. 

What  does  it  avail  me  that  at  banquets  my  health  is 
pledged  in  the  choicest  wines  and  drunk  from  golden 
goblets,  when  I,  myself,  severed  from  all  that  makes  life 


244         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

pleasant  may  only  wet  my  lips  with  an  insipid  emotion? 
What  does  it  avail  me  that  enthusiastic  youths  and  maid- 
ens crown  my  marble  bust  with  laurel  wreaths,  if  mean- 
while the  shriveled  fingers  of  an  aged  nurse  press  a 
blister  of  Spanish  flies  behind  the  ears  of  my  actual  body. 
What  does  it  avail  me  that  all  the  roses  of  Shiraz  so  ten- 
derly glow  and  bloom  for  me?  Alas!  Shiraz  is  two 
thousand  miles  away  from  the  Rue  d' Amsterdam,  where, 
in  the  dreary  solitude  of  my  sick-room,  I  have  nothing  to 
smell,  unless  it  be  the  perfume  of  warmed  napkins. 

When  you  read  Hardy's  Return  of  the  Native  and 
reach  the  part  where  Yeobright  reproaches  his  wife 
Eustacia  for  causing  the  death  of  his  mother  by  closing 
the  door  on  her  so  as  not  to  be  detected  with  a  lover,  you 
are  in  the  midst  of  poetry. 

Call  her  to  mind — think  of  her — what  goodness  there 
was  in  her :  it  showed  in  every  line  of  her  face !  .  .  .  O ! 
couldn't  you  see  what  was  best  for  you,  but  you  must 
bring  a  curse  upon  me,  and  agony  and  death  upon  her, 
by  doing  that  cruel  deed !  .  .  .  Eustacia,  didn't  any  ten- 
der thought  of  your  own  mother  lead  you  to  think  of 
being  gentle  to  mine  at  such  a  time  of  weariness?  Did 
not  one  grain  of  pity  enter  your  heart  as  she  turned 
away? 

If  you  are  awakened  by  the  beauty  and  profundity  of 
the  following  passage  from  Lafcadio  Hearn's  "Of  Moon- 
Desire,"  from  the  volume  Exotics  and  Retrospectives, 
you  delight  in  poetry. 

And  meantime  those  old  savage  sympathies  with  sav- 
age nature  that  spring  from  the  deepest  sources  of  our 
being  .  .  .  would  seem  destined  to  sublime  at  last  into 
forms  of  cosmical  emotion  expanding  and  responding  to 
infinitude. 

Have  you  never  thought  about  those  immemorial  feel- 
ings ?  Have  you  never,  when  looking  at  some  great  burn- 


CONCLUSION  245 

ing,  found  yourself  exulting  without  remorse  in  the 
triumph  and  glory  of  fire? — never  unconsciously  coveted 
the  crumbling,  splitting,  iron-wrenching,  granite-cracking 
force  of  its  imponderable  touch? — never  delighted  in  the 
furious  and  terrible  splendor  of  its  phantasmagories, — 
the  ravening  and  bickering  of  its  dragons, — the  mon- 
strosity of  its  archings, — the  ghostly  soaring  and  flapping 
of  its  spires?  Have  you  never,  with  a  hill-wind  pealing 
in  your  ears,  longed  to  ride  that  wind  like  a  ghost, — to 
scream  around  the  peaks  with  it, — to  sweep  the  face  of 
the  world  with  it  ?  Or,  watching  the  lifting,  the  gather- 
ing, the  muttering  rush  and  thunder-burst  of  breakers, 
have  you  felt  no  impulse  kindered  to  the  giant  motion, — 
no  longing  to  leap  with  that  wild  tossing,  and  to  join  in 
that  mighty  shout? 

I  should  like  to  go  on  quoting  passages  from  other 
books  to  show  the  reader  that  if  he  likes  them  he  is  em- 
phatically a  lover  of  poetry.  I  might  have  given  one  of 
the  great  prose  poems  in  Nietzsche's  Thus  Spake  Zara- 
thustra  or  a  grand  descriptive  passage  from  Flaubert's 
novel  Salammbo.  I  might  have  presented  for  the  edifica- 
tion of  the  "hater"  of  poetry  the  renowned  description  of 
the  Mona  Lisa  by  Pater  in  his  essay  on  Leonardo  da 
Vinci  in  The  Renaissance.  I  could  have  added  Carlyle's 
reflections  of  Teufelsdroch  in  his  tower,  from  Sartor 
Resartus,  Heine's  portrayal  of  Paginini  at  the  violin  in 
The  Florentine  Nights,  George  Brandes's  apostrophe  to 
Hamlet  as  a  symbol  of  ourselves  in  his  book  on  Shake- 
speare, Dickens'  description  of  the  tower  in  Chimes,  or 
Balzac's  eulogy  on  the  scientist  as  a  poet  in  the  Wild 
Ass's  Skin. 

That  is  poetry  whether  in  verse  or  prose,  where  any 
profound  idea  is  ecstatically  or  passionately  stated.  That 
is  poetry  where  man  gives  utterance  to  any  sorrow  or 
desolation,  or  where  he  shouts  out  his  gladness  because  he 
finds  life  good  and  nature  beautiful;  when  he  talks  of 


246         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

the  pains  or  thrills  of  love;  when  he  shows  compassion 
for  the  miseries  of  his  fellow-men.  You  find  poetry 
wherever  man  is  depicted  in  a  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  for 
an  idea  or  a  person  he  loves ;  or  where  he  is  shown  pur- 
suing an  ideal  or  ambition.  Heroism  is  poetry;  philan- 
thropy is  poetry ;  self-development  is  poetry.  Pictures  of 
striking  scenes;  portrayals  of  interesting  events;  conflicts 
between  duties;  delineations  of  tragic  situations;  toler- 
ance for  human  frailties;  anger  at  injustice,  admonition 
for  follies,  chidings  or  outbursts  against  stupidity;  cries 
of  helplessness;  all  of  these  in  artistic  form  become 
poems.  Accounts  of  cruelty,  barbarism,  madness,  horror, 
wicked  deeds  or  abnormal  or  supernormal  conduct,  if 
well  described  become  poetical,  for  poetry  need  not  point 
a  conventional  moral.  Hence  villainy,  immorality,  crime, 
may  be  so  artistically  pictured  that  our  emotions  are 
worked  upon  and  though  our  moral  sense  is  shocked  we 
are  held  spellbound  in  witnessing  these  malign  forces  in 
nature. 

I  plead  then  that  ecstasy,  and  not  rhythm,  should  char- 
acterize much  of  our  literature ;  and  I  seek  to  show  that 
poetry  is  not  a  department  of  literature  but  a  spirit  that 
permeates  the  best  writing  even  in  prose.  Our  entire 
attitude  in  estimating  what  is  poetry  will  be  changed,  for 
the  world's  emotional  prose  literature  will  be  taken  into 
its  domain.  And  the  importance  of  rhythm  in  making 
verse  will  be  a  thing  of  the  past  and  genuine  emotion  will 
receive  its  right  name. 

I  also  hope  that  a  higher  valuation  will  be  given  to 
literature  which  shows  an  interest  in  the  working  classes 
and  seeks  social  justice.  I  do  not,  however,  assert  that 
the  literature  of  pure  rational  propaganda  would  become 
poetry,  or  that  the  writings  of  men  who  attach  themselves 
to  certain  political  or  economical  theories  would  be  great 


CONCLUSION  247 

by  virtue  of  the  adherence  to  a  particular  theory.  But 
there  is  a  tendency  to  decry  a  writer  when  he  shows  an 
interest  in  social  problems  and  tells  the  world  that  some- 
thing is  rotten  in  Denmark. 

There  are  occasionally  great  literary  products  that  are 
to  be  found  often  in  radical  and  obscure  papers  that  be- 
long to  the  literature  of  the  ecstasy  of  social  justice. 
These  would  have  never  been  accepted  by  the  academic 
or  capitalistic  bourgeois  press,  any  more  than  would  some 
of  the  older  prophecies  have  been  accepted  had  they  been 
submitted  as  unrequested  contributions  to  our  magazine 
editors.  Many,of  those  compositions  depend  for  literary 
value  on  universal  feeling,  and  make  no  appeal  to  party 
feeling  or  economical  theory,  and  they  can  be  appreciated 
by  people  who  seek  poetry. 

The  reader  will  observe  then  that  not  all  species  of 
ecstasy  belong  to  the  high  order  of  literature.  But  the  skill 
of  the  artist  may  elevate  the  lower  order  of  ecstasy  to  that 
of  a  higher  plane,  and  the  amateurishness  of  the  author 
may  deflect  what  might  be  poetry  of  a  higher  degree  to  that 
of  a  commonplace  order.  Stories  of  adventure,  abound- 
ing in  false  sentiment,  misleading  examples  and  unreal 
situations,  are  hardly  poetry  or  good  literature  of  ecstasy. 
But  Stevenson  transmutes  such  a  tale  into  excellent  poetry 
in  Treasure  Island.  Those  who  have  read  the  pathological 
outbursts  of  religio-maniacs,  rife  in  outworn  dogma,  and 
seething  with  morbid  emotions,  will  not  maintain  that 
such  productions  are  poetry  of  a  high  order,  though  the 
ecstatic  element  is  present  in  marked  degree.  Yet  a  St. 
Augustine  occasionally  makes  good  poetry  out  of  such 
material. 

In  general,  that  is  not  great  poetry  or  literature  of 
ecstasy  which  appeals  to  the  rude  primitive  emotions. 
When  the  purpose  of  a  literary  work  is  to  wean  us  from 


248         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

finer  feelings,  to  make  us  sympathize  with  cruelty,  to 
paralyze  the  sympathetic  emotions  within  us,  and  to  kill 
all  feelings  rooted  in  love,  pity,  service,  justice  and  kind- 
ness, it  is  not  of  a  great  order  of  poetry.  Those  works 
in  whole  or  part  that  fan  the  martial  spirit  within  us,  and 
take  hold  of  us  as  with  an  hypnotic  sway  of  the  hand,  and 
make  us  seek  to  murder  our  fellow  men,  and  to  arouse 
the  lust  for  blood  in  us,  cannot  be  great  works.  No  liter- 
ature that  is  heartless  or  brutal,  or  confuses  an  appeal  to 
the  murderous  instincts  with  real  love  of  country,  or  love 
of  liberty,  with  self-sacrifice  for  justice  or  loved  ones, 
can  be  valuable  to  us  either  practically  or  aesthetically. 
No  literature  that  reeks  with  blood,  and  fosters  unrea- 
sonable revenge,  or  depicts  sympathetically  shameful  vic- 
tories, or  crowns  with  the  garland  of  a  hero  the  mere 
warrior  who  is  a  warrior  for  the  pure  delight  of  killing, 
is  really  of  the  higher  type  of  literature  of  ecstasy.  It  is 
this  martial  phase  that  makes  most  of  the  early  literature 
of  all  nations  valuable  only  in  parts ;  in  those  parts  where 
the  more  beautiful  and  human  phases  of  life  are  dealt 
with,  and  where  the  more  genial  emotions  are  crystallized. 
So  many  theories  of  poetry  are  futile,  because  they  are 
based  on  studies  primarily  of  the  epic  poems  of  the  na- 
tions, and  it  is  these  epic  poems  that  mingle  the  most 
impoverished  and  base  poetry  with  that  of  a  fine  quality. 
Nor  is  that  great  poetry  or  literature  of  ecstasy  of  a 
high  order  which  is  purely  tribal  or  clannish  in  feeling; 
nor  when  chauvinistic  and  full  of  hatred  for  all  other 
peoples.  This  does  not  mean  that  poetry  must  not  smack 
of  the  soil,  and  that  it  cannot  preserve  a  sane  patriotic 
and  national  feeling,  and  worship  a  culture  inherent  in  a 
people.  But  when  the  ecstasy  descends  to  the  kind  which 
kills  individualism  under  'the  pretense  of  encouraging  it, 
when  it  is  hostile  to  the  stranger  and  the  original  thinker, 


CONCLUSION  249 

when  it  fosters  the  primitive  anti-social  instincts  as  re- 
gards all  outside  of  a  clan,  it  becomes  inhuman  and  per- 
nicious. 

Nor  is  that  great  poetry  or  literature  of  ecstasy  of  a 
high  order  which  in  its  mystic  quality  eludes  all  com- 
promises with  reason,  and  borders  on  absurdity  or  is 
pathological.  When  poetry  seeks  salvation  in  apparent 
madness,  and  attaches  itself  to  faith  in  the  impossible,  and 
sees  distorted  visions,  and  creates  a  maniac's  world  of  un- 
questionably inverted  order  of  hell-fire  and  brimstone,  and 
makes  outrageous  and  unjust  demands  on  human  nature 
it  is  of  a  low  order.  Nor  is  an  unwarranted  asceticism  in 
poetry  calculated  to  raise  its  tone. 

It  is  vain  to  enumerate  the  various  ecstasies  of  a  low 
order,  that  of  the  literature  which  upholds  different 
forms  of  wrong,  as  well  as  that  which  is  too  much  at- 
tached to  the  commonplace,  nor  is  it  necessary  to  show 
that  that  poetry  is  not  of  a  high  order  whose  author  goes 
into  ecstasies  about  nuances,  indulges  in  inappropriate 
imagery,  piles  up  trite  ideas  in  flowery  diction,  or  gives 
continual  iteration  to  the  least  important  of  commonplace 
emotions. 

What  then  is  literature  of  a  high  order?  What  is  this 
great  form  of  art  that  takes  us  out  of  ourselves  because 
it  has  in  it  so  much  of  ourselves?  What  is  this  magical 
arrangement  of  words  enshrining  what  ideas  and  emotions 
that  gives  us  a  zest  for  life,  that  makes  us  drunk  with 
aesthetic  pleasure?  It  includes  many  species,  all,  as  Mil- 
ton would  say,  in  a  "strain  of  a  higher  mood."  One  of  its 
greatest  manifestations  is  that  in  which  the  ecstasy  for 
social  justice  and  a  high  form  of  idealism  control  the 
poet.  We  become  carried  away  with  his  frenzy,  for  it 
evokes  the  highest  emotions  in  us;  an  undeviating  and 
never  swerving  enthusiasm  for  spreading  right  and  hap- 


250         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

piness  is  an  elevated  form  of  ecstasy.  The  grief  of  the 
oppressed  and  the  poor  goes  to  our  own  hearts,  and  the 
calamities  of  the  woe-begone  become  our  own.  We  sub- 
merge our  personality  in  that  of  the  human  race,  and  the 
griefs  of  strangers  lure  us  to  cry  out  for  them. 

But  it  should  be  remembered  that  literature  never  thus 
becomes  a  weapon  for  reform  or  a  piece  of  didacticism  or 
propaganda.  The  emotion  is  the  thing.  The  practical 
work  of  relief  of  suffering  is  the  function  of  the  reformer 
and  not  the  poet.  It  is  the  poet's  duty  only  to  make  a  cer- 
tain form  of  ecstasy  contagious.  Practical  results  will 
follow  as  a  matter  of  course. 

And  then  there  is  the  ecstasy  that  revolves  around  a 
profound  philosophic  insight,  when  the  poet  rids  himself 
of  prejudiced  and  barren  thinking  and  looks  at  the  uni- 
verse with  awe  and  goes  into  rhapsodies  about  its  work- 
ings. And  it  takes  a  high  order  of  intellect  to  sympathize 
with  the  literature  of  ecstasy  of  this  kind,  that  pierces 
into  the  soul  of  the  universe.  The  advanced  ideas  of  the 
greatest  poets  are,  however,  often  such  as  only  a  few 
people  have  intellect  enough  to  perceive,  or  are  such  as 
can  be  grasped  only  when  man  throws  aside  all  his 
prejudices.  And  here  the  great  philosopher,  mathema- 
tician and  scientist  come  to  the  aid  of  the  poet,  who  emo- 
tionalizes their  greatest  discoveries.  For  reason  must  go 
hand  in  hand  with  ecstasy. 

There  is  the  ecstasy  where  men  are  shown  in  the  help- 
less grasp  of  great  passions,  and  are  in  despair  because 
of  events  beyond  their  control.  Such  passions  include 
grief  of  all  kinds,  whether  brought  about  by  death  or 
wrong  or  one's  own  folly.  The  depicting  of  great  pas- 
sion belongs  to  the  grand  order  of  the  literature  of 
ecstasy  even  when  the  poet  makes  no  attempt  to  moralize 
from  or  sympathize  with  it.  Crime  and  wickedness  may 


CONCLUSION  251 

be  masterfully  described  with  no  ethical  intent,  for  we  are 
interested  in  the  grand  spectacle  of  a  man  whom  the  Gods 
have  made  mad,  for  madness  is  potential  in  all  of  us. 

There  is  the  ecstasy  of  the  lover  in  his  rapture  for  his 
mistress,  and  in  his  transformed  nature.  We  are  moved 
by  the  delicacy  of  his  sentiment,  his  chivalry,  his  sacri- 
fice, we  are  overcome  by  his  sorrows  and  his  misfortunes. 
There  is  the  ecstasy  of  the  love  of  nature  where  the  ma- 
jesty of  this  universe  is  set  out  in  its  glory.  There  is  the 
ecstasy  of  the  lover  of  beauty  for  its  own  sake,  and  of 
the  artist  in  the  pursuit  of  his  work,  and  of  the  reader 
and  of  him  who  listens  to  music,  of  him  who  sees  artistic 
pictures.  There  is  the  ecstasy  of  the  scientist  in  his  pur- 
suit of  truth,  and  of  the  inventor  in  transforming  the 
face  of  the  globe. 

We  cry  out  for  ecstasy;  it  is  the  substance  of  our 
lives ;  even  though,  often  in  our  pursuit  of  pleasant  ecstasy, 
we  are  launched  into  tragedy.  We  are  hungry  for  a  happy 
life  of  the  emotions.  It  is  this  which  makes  lovers  and 
friends  and  parents  of  us.  It  is  this  which  makes  us 
poets,  and  it  is  the  poet  in  ourselves  that  we  always. hunt 
out. 

I  hope  our  study  has  helped  us  to  distinguish  the  higher 
from  the  lower  forms  of  ecstasy,  to  find  poetry  in  prose, 
and  to  differentiate  poetry  from  verse,  wherein  there  is 
no  ecstasy  but  various  conventions,  like  inversion,  poetic 
diction,  rhyme,  metre,  figures  of  speech,  parallelisms, 
technique,  and  all  forms  of  rhythm  and  repeats.  That 
much  of  the  best  of  the  world's  poetry  has  made  abun- 
dant use  of  these  mechanisms  has  led  the  critics  to  con- 
fuse poetry  with  its  conventions.  But  the  ecstasy  was 
forgotten,  and  the  emotional  and  intellectual  value  of  the 
poem  was  overlooked.  It  was  thought  because  the  mas- 
ters subscribed  slavishly  to  the  conventions  that  they  be- 


252         THE  LITERATURE  OF  ECSTASY 

came  poets  because  of  them,  whereas  they  were  poets 
first  and  last  because  of  the  ecstasy,  sometimes  with  the 
aid  of  the  conventions  and  sometimes  despite  them. 
That  these  mechanisms  will  always  be  used  in  some  de- 
gree is  certain,  but  the  most  natural  poetry  will  be  that 
which  uses  them  moderately,  irregularly  and  only  when 
the  emotions  and  the  ideas  naturally  clothe  themselves  in 
them. 

Poetry  and  prose  then  are  not  contradictory,  but  prose 
becomes  poetry  when  the  element  of  ecstasy  is  present. 
We  use  the  word  prosaic  in  a  sense,  it  is  true,  which 
means  destitute  of  imagination  or  emotion ;  we  even  call 
verse  of  this  kind  prosaic.  But  a  work  in  prose  may  be 
poetical,  and  one  in  verse  be  prosaic,  and  science,  philos- 
ophy and  morality  become  poetry,  though  in  the  form  of 
prose,  when  bathed  in  the  spirit  of  ecstasy.  And  the 
highest  form  of  poetry  is  that  wherein  the  ecstasy  springs 
from  our  nature's  most  human  and  most  admirable  side. 

After  having  learned  that  poetry  is  more  natural  with- 
out metre  or  a  pattern,  that  it  may  be  in  prose  with  or 
without  rhythm,  that  it  may  have  a  social  message,  that 
it  is  the  product  of  the  unconscious,  that  it  is  related  to 
dreams  in  being  an  imaginary  fulfilled  wish  of  the  poet, 
that  it  acts  as  a  relief  to  the  writer  and  the  reader,  that  it 
is  always  personal  and  lyric,  that  it  is  synonymous  with 
expression  in  the  poet's  mind,  that  its  chief  characteristic 
is  passion,  imagination  or  ecstasy,  that  its  qualities  are 
often  enhanced  rather  than  destroyed  by  the  presence  of 
intellect  or  morality,  that  it  is  an  emotional  spirit  holding 
literature  in  suffusion  instead  of  being  a  branch  of  litera- 
ture, we  shall  find  that  most  of  the  old  definitions  of  po- 
etry exclude  a  great  deal  of  the  world's  best  poetry,  and 
include  much  that  is  not  poetry. 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 


Abu  ali  al  Qali,  222 

Abu  '1  Ala  al  Maarri,  216,  217 

Abu  '1  Atahiya,  216,  218 

Abu  Nuwas,  205 

Abu   Zayd,  215 

JElfric,  1 08,  114 

^schylus,  15,  27  ,160 

Al  Ghazzali,  34,  35 

Al  Hatimi,  223 

Aldington,  Richard,  122 

Ambros,  Wilhelm  A.,  52 

Antar,  209,  211,  219 

Ari  Frodi,  no 

Ariosto,  in,  238 

Aristotle,    15,    29,   42,   96,    136, 

169,  179,  1 80,  193,  221 
Arnold,    Matthew,    23,   49,   64, 

117,   126,   129 

Bacon,  Francis,  48,   52,   53,   79, 

135 

Baha  Ad  Din  Zuhayr,  220 
Balzac,  49,   53,  57,   58,   59,   72, 

87,    IS4,    165,    181,    190,    236, 

245. 

Baqui  2ii,  214 
Baudelaire,  Charles,  18,  89,  126, 

138,   153 

Beaconsfield,  Lord,  49,  88,  89 
Beckford,  213 
Benavente,  Jacinto,  71 
Bergson,  30,  136 
Bernays,  Jacob,  180 
Bielinski,  162 
Blake,  William,  18,  44,  73,  118, 

167,  186 

Bosanquet,  180,  181 
Bossnet,  87,  228 
Boswell,  221 
Bradley,  A.  C,  126 


Brandes,    George,   72,   92,    131, 

141,  142,  167,  245 
Breasted,  James  H.,  99 
Briffault,  Robert,  212 
Browne,    Edgar    G.,    203,    204, 

225 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  88 
Browning,  Elizabeth  B.,  53,  61 
Browning,    Robert,    18,  61,  86, 

124,  134,  213 
Bryant,  W.  C.,  50 
Buchanan,  Robert,  143 
Bunyan,  John,  20,  88 

Burke,   Edmund,  49,   120,  229, 

230 
Burns,  Robert,  31,  69,  128,  154, 

173,  185,  190,  198 
Butcher,  S.  H.,  24,  42,  159 
Byron  Lord,  18,  31,  01,  72,  86, 

125,  154,   167,    173,   185,   190, 

213,   222 

Carlyle,    Thomas,    53,   72,    134, 

137,  148,  168,  169,  171 
Carpenter,  Edward,  118 
Castelevetro,  43,  179 
Cervantes,  87,  154,  167,  211 
Chateaubriand,  49,  58,  87 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  172 
Chekhov,  Anton,  71,  122 
Cicero,  87,  89,   119,  229,  230 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  12,  47,  48,  49, 

77,  78,  121  173,  186,  234 
Conrad,  57,  71,  116 
Corneille,  87 
Cowper,  William,  134 
Crane,  Stephen,  118 
Croce,  15,  28,  81,  145,  146,  147. 

148,  149,  50,  239 
Crosby,  Ernest,  118 


253 


254 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 


Dallas,  E.  S.,  187,  191 

Dalman,  G.,  102 

Dante,  13,  47,  133,  141,  167,  233, 

238 

D'Annunzio,  51 
Daudet,  Alphonse,  186 
Davidson,  Israel,  172 
De  Musset,  Alfred,  121,  154 
De  Quincey,  Thomas,  40,  87,  go, 

117 
De  Slane,  MacGuckin,  203,  209, 

223 

De  Vigny,  166 
Democritus,    15 
Demosthenes,  24,  119,  229 
Descartes,  135 
Dickens,    Charles,    53,    72,    84, 

121,  154,  168,  169,  242 
Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  28, 

119,  181 

Dobrolubov,  162 
Donne,   21 

Dostoievsky,  143,  154 
Doughty,  71 
Drummond,  Henry,  88 
Dryden,  John,  172 
Dumas,  Alexander,  168 
Dunash  ben  Labrat,  104 

Eaton,  Walter  P.,  115 
Eliot,  George,  89,  121,  135 
Elliott,  Ebenezer,  88 
Ellis,  Havelock,  185,  186 
Emerson,  R.  W.,  23,  53,  81,  92, 

93,  94,  121,  186,  200 
Erasmus  43 
Erskine,  John,  117 
Euripides,  30 

Fairchild,  A.  H.,  200 

Fenelon,  86,  161 

Fielding,  231,  236 

Flaubert,  138,  140,  165 

Flint,  F.  S.,  122 

France,  Anatole,  201,  232 

Freud,  15,  28,  135,  167,  181,  185, 

189,  199 
Froude,  137 
Fuller,  Thomas,  88 

Galsworthy,  John,  71,  155 
Gautier,  138 


Gibbon,  137 

Giovanitti,  Arthur,  158 
Goethe,  46,  71,  72,  118,  121,  131, 

134,   148,   154,   167,   176,   185, 

190,  213,  214 
Goldberg,  Isaac,  177 
Goldziher,   105 
Gorki,  156 
Gosse,  Edmund,  64 
Graetz,  225 
Gray,  Thomas,  19 
Guerin,  49 

Gummere,  Professor,  44,  198 
Gurney,  62 

Ha  Levi,  Jehudah,  105,  172 

Hafiz,  154,  211 

Halper  ,B.,  172,  182 

Hardy,  Thomas,  53,  71,  121,  181, 

244 

Hariri,  214,  215,  218 
Harper,  G.  M.,  122 
Harte,  Bret,  50,  130 
Hauptmann,  71,  155,  156,  200 
Hawthorne,   Nathaniel,   50,   53, 

92 

Hazlitt,  49,  77,  131,  185,  193 
Hearn,  Lafcadio,  30,  46,  71,  72, 

115,  140,  175,  232,  244 
Hegel,  121,  240 
Heine,  Heinrich,  18,  31,  49,  70, 

71,  118,  121,  154,  172,  190,  230, 

243,  245 

Henley,  Walter,  117 
Henry,  O.,  130,  230 
Herodotus,  48 
Hewlett,  Maurice,  71,  116 
Holmes,  O.  W.,  50,  168,  186 
Homer,    13,   15,  62,  80,  82,  93, 

137,  167,  236,  238 
Horace,  72,  128 
Hovey,   Richard,   118 
Howells,  W.  D.,  86,  144 
Hudson,  W.  H.,  71 
Hugo,  Victor,  58,  87,  140,  154 
Hume,  135,  170 
Huneker,  18 
Hunt,  Leigh,  234 
Ibn  Abi  Rabia,  Omar,  207 
Ibn  Daud,  Abraham,  183 
Ibn  Ezra,  Moses,  172,  182,  222 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 


255 


Ibn  Gebirol,  Solomon,  172 

Ibn  Ishaq,  223 

Ibn  Khaldun,  203,  204,  205,  222, 

223 

Ibn  Khallikans,  209 
Ibn  Pakuda,  Bachya,  172 
Ibn  Rashiq,  223 
Ibn  ul  Farid,  Umar,  220 
Ibn  ul  Mutazz,  223 
Ibn  Yunus,  220 
Ibn  Zaydun,  219 
Ibsen,    Henrik,    15,    38,   48,    71, 

131,    132,    142,   150,   154,    166, 

167,  169,  185,  190,  242 
Imru  'ul  Qays,  206,  215,  218 
Ingelow,  Jean,  227 
Israeli,    Isaac,    183 

Jacob,  Gary  F.,  46 

Jahiz,  222 

Jalalu  '1  Din  Rumi,  22 

Jannai,  104 

Johnson,  Samuel,  113,  185 

Kant,  229 

Kaplan,  Jacob  H.,  37 

Keats,  John,   18,  128,   138,  154, 

173,  233,  235,  247 
Keble,  John,   187-190 
Kelley,  Fitz Maurice,  212 
Kempis,  Thomas  a,  20 
Khalil  Ahmad,  221 
Khansa,  214 
Kingsley,  Charles,  185 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  50,  71 
Konig,  IQI,  102 

La  Rochefoucauld,  167 
Lamb,  Charles,  69,  185 
Landor,  W.  S.,  81,  213 
Langdon,  Professor,  100 
Langland,  158 
Lawrence,  D.  H.,  71 
Le  Sage,  87 
Lee,  A.  H.  E.,  23 
Leopardi,   143 
Lespinasse,   Madame,  53 
Lessing,  G.  E.,  62,  63,  179,  239 
Lewis,  Sinclair,  232 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  60 
Livy,  48,  120,  137 


Locke,  John,  178 

Longfellow,  H.  W.,  30,  126,  154, 

170,  175,  176 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  41,  176,  178,  186, 

193 

Lowes,  Professor,  63,  116 
Lowth,  Bishop,  102 
Lucas,  E.  V.,  221 
Lyly,  John,  121 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  168 
Macdonald,  Duncan  B.,  34 
Machen,  Arthur,  23 
Macleod,  Fiona,  116 
Maggi,   179 

Maimonides,  Moses,  37 
Ma j  nun,  206 
Malory,  55,  88 
Margoliouth,  218 
Mark  Twain,  59,  230 
Marston,  P.  B.,  227 
Marsyas,  26 

Masaryk,  Thomas  G.,  162 
Masters,  Ed.  L.,  116 
Maupassant,  Guy  de,  148 
Meredith,  George,  116,  121,  135, 

230 

Mihailovsky,  162 
Mill,  J.  S.,  88,  178 
Mills,  L.  H.,  106 
Milton,  John,  13,  47,  49,  64,  88, 

118,    120,   122,   141,   167,    178, 

1 80,  236 
Minturno,  179 
Mirabeau,  87 
Moliere,  87,  154,  167 
Morley,  John,  168 
Moore,  George,  92 
Moore,  Thomas,  49,  71,  213 
Moulton,  R.  G.,  103 
Miiller,  Max,   106 
Murray,  Gilbert,  30 
Murry,  J.  Middleton,  122 

Neilson,  Willian  A.,  33 
Newboldt,  Henry,  171 
Newton,  Isaac,  40 
Nicholson,   D.    H.    S.,   23,   218, 

219,  225 

Nidham  I  Arudi,  204 
Nidhami,  206 


256 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 


Nietzsche,  28,  30,  53,  81,  124, 
154,  163,  166,  171,  181,  189, 
242 

Omar  Khayyam,  218 
Oppenheim,  James,  158 
Ossian,  118 

Palgrave,  W.  G.,  207 

Pascal,  20,  124 

Pater,   Walter,   30,   45,   53,   72, 

116,  117,  126,  239,  245 
Patterson,  Professor,  45,  46,  117 
Perry,  Bliss,  118 
Phelps,  W.  L.,  21 
Pindar,   160 
Pisarev,  162 
Plato,  15,  24,  25,  26,  27,  49,  52, 

53,    96,    119,    122,    124,    132, 

148,  160 

Plutarch,  48,  56,   121,  133,   137 
Poe,  E.  A.j  18,  49,  50,  61,  72, 

74,  92,  121,  131,  144,  161 
Pope,  Alexander,  7,  133,  232 
Prescott,  F.  C,  184 
Prevost,  87 
Pythagoras,  133 

Qudama,  223 

Quiller-Couch,   Sir  Arthur,  66, 

67 

Quintilian,   120 
Qutayba,  222 

Riley,  J.  W.,  170 

Roberts,  W.  Rhys,  119 

Robortelli,  179 

Rolland,  154 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  116 

Rossetti,  Dante  G.,  186 

Rousseau,  53,  87,  134 

Ruskin,  John,  38,  53,  72,  84,  1 12, 

130,  154,  168,  169 
Russel,  Bertrand,  136 

Saadyah,  104 

St.  Augustine,  20,  53 

Saintsbury,  George,  43,  44,  81, 

221 

Sand,  George,  87 
Sandburg,  116 


Savonarola,  43 

Schlegel,  Frederick,  49 

Schofield,  W.  H.,  212 

Schopenhauer,  53,  124,  135,  163, 
199 

Scott,  Samuel  P.,  213 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  55,  121,  168 

Senancour,  49 

Shairp,  J.  C,  89 

Shakespeare,  William,  13,  16, 
56,  57,  69,  82,  83,  101,  112, 
113,  124,  134,  138,  148,  150, 
154,  167,  168,  170,  177,  193, 
226,  238 

Shaw,  Bernard,  38,  112,  156,  167 

Shelley,  P.  B.,  12,  18,  23,  29, 
32,  38,  48,  70,  72,  74,  121,  124, 
128,  133,  154,  167,  169,  173, 
185,  186,  190,  233,  235 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  12,  48,  88, 
119,  121 

Sinclair,  Upton  B.,  155,  200 

Smith,  Sir  George  A.,  101,  215 

Smith,  W.  Robertson,  100 

Socrates,   26,  42 

Sophocles,  13,  80,  83,  160 

Southey,  Robert,  213 

Spence^  Herbert,  135 

Spenser,  Edmund,  13,  236,  238 

Speroni,  179 

Spingarn,  117,  132,  179 

Spinoza,  134,  135 

Stedman,  E.  C.,  32,  58 

Stendhal,  57,  142,  206 

Stevenson,  R.  A.  M.,  138 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  247 

Strabo,  97 

Strindberg,  143 

Surrey,  213 

Swinburne,  A.  C.,  18,  29,  73, 
125,  138,  140,  154 

Symonds,  J.  A.,  27,  69,  III, 
125,  126 

Symons,  Arthur,  63,  121,  138 

Synge,  71 


Tacitus,  137 

Taine,  170 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  48,  178,  230 

Tchernishevski,  162 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 


257 


Tennyson,  Alfred,  18,  23,  154, 

185 

Tha  'alibi,  223 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  23,  121,  181 
Thompson,  Francis,  72 
Thomson,  James,  186 
Thucydides,  53,  119,  137,  228 
Tolstoy,   36,   53,    57,    140,    142, 

190 

Traubel,  Horace,  118,  158 
Tupper,  Martin,  118 
Turgenev,  57 

Untermyer,  Louis,  118,  158 

Van  Teslaar,  J.  S.,  182 
Varchi,  179 
Verhaeren,  155 
Verlaine,  31,  72,  154 
Veron,  Eugene,  87 
Vettori,  179 
Virgil,  57,  62,  148 
Voltaire,  230 

Warton,  Thomas,  211 
Watts-Dunton,  240 


Weil,  Henri,  180 

Whistler,  138 

Whitman,  Walt,  12,  15,  23,  31, 
44,  45,  63,  65,  79,  "4,  "6, 
118,  124,  142,  154,  164,  175, 
178 

Wilde,  Oscar,  53,  138,  167 

Wilkinson,  J.  G.,  186,  187 

Wittels,  F.,  181 

Woodberry,  Professor,  31,  132 

Wordsworth,  William,  12,  15, 
18,  23,  29,  30,  45,  49,  51,  52, 
60,  65,  77,  78,  112,  121,  124, 

146,    164,    173,    185,   222,   234 

Wulfstan  107,  108 
Wyatt,  213 

Xenophon,  48 

Yeats,  William  Butler,  71,  165, 

Zoroaster,  107 

Zola,  Emil,   142,   155,  156,   165, 

167,  200 
Zuhayr,  215 


INDEX  OF  BOOKS  AND  WRITINGS 


Adam  Bede,  44 

Advancement  of   Learning,   79 

^Eneid,  53,  54,  57,  m 

^Esthetics,  87 

Albion's  England,  85 

Arabia  Deserta,  71 

Arabian  Nights,   187,  205,  213, 

218 

Arcadia,  121 
Aeropagitica,   122,   178 
Ars  Poetica,  241 
Art  of  Writing,  66 
Aspects  of  Poetry,  89 
Assemblies  (or  Maqamat),  214, 

215,  218 
Atala,  87 

Aucassin  and  Nicolette,  86 
Aurora  Leigh,  61 
Avesta,  105,  106 
Avowals,  92 
Aylmer's  Field,  44 

Ballad    of    Mary   the    Mother, 

143 

Bedouins,  18 
Beginnings  of  Poetry,  44 
Beowulf,  103,  108 
Bible,  14,  44,  102,  103,  118,  160, 

177,  202,   215,   222,  233 

Birth  of  Tragedy,  29 
Botanical  Garden,  85 
Boundaries  of  Music  and 

Poetry,  52 
Brand,  do 
Brushwood  Boy,  50 

Canterbury  Tales,  55 
Chanting  the  Square  Deific,  23 
Chapbook,  88 
Cherry  Orchard,  122 
Christmas  Carol,  i(J8 


City  of  Dreams,  The,  143 

Confessions,  53 

Confessions     of     an     Opium 

Eater,  40 
Conservator,  118 
Convention     and     Revolt     in 

Poetry,  63 

Corn  Law  Rhymes,  88 
Cousin  Pons,  59 
Creative  Criticism,  117 
Critique  of  Judgment,  229 
Cypress  Grove,  109 

David  Copperfield,  54 

Dawn,  155 

Decameron,  49 

Defense  of  Poetry,  73 

Deserted  Village,  49 

Devil's  Case,   143 

Dialogues  on  Eloquence,  86 

Divine  Comedy,  60,   184 

Doll's  House,  132 

Don  Juan,  61,  86,  125 

Don  Quixote,  39,  49,  169,  211, 

212 

Dream  Fugue,  57 
Dreams  and  Poetry,  184 

Early    Poetry    of    Israel,    ror, 

215 

Elegy  in  a  Country  Church- 
yard, 19 

Eleonora,  50 

English  Literature  from  Roman 
Conquest,  to  Chaucer,  212 

Enoch  Arden,  44 

Epipsychidion,  165,  183 

Erewhon,  232 

Erotic  Motive  in  Literature, 
185 

Essay  on  Man,  122 


259 


260      INDEX  OF  BOOKS  AND  WRITINGS 


Essays  in  Sacred  Language, 
Writings  and  Religion  of  the 
Parsis,  107 

Essays  Speculative  and  Sug- 
gestive, 125 

Essentials  of  Poetry,  33 

Ethics,  134 

Eugene  Grandet,  59 

Euphues,  121 

Excursion,  60 

Exotics  and  Retrospectives, 
"5,  244 

Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher, 

144 

Fathers  and  Sons,  57 
Fingal,  58 
First  Four  Books  of  Civil  War, 

85 
Foundations    and    Nature    of 

Verse,  46 

French  Revolution,  53,  137 
Function  of  the  Poet,  41 
Fuzzy  Wuzzy,  50 

Gathas,  107 

Genesis,  Book  of,  64 

Genius  of  Christianity,  87 

Georgics,  62,  148 

Germinal,  155,  200 

Ghosts,  59 

Gilgash,  loo 

Gorboduc,  112 

Great  Expectations,  124 

Greek  Poets,  69 

Guide  to  the  Perplexed,  37 

Gulliver's  Travels,  71 

Hacuzari,  105 

Harvard    Lectures    on    Greek 

Subjects,  24 
Haunted  Mind,  50 
Heart  of  Midlothian,  55 
Heathen  Chinee,  50 
Hertha,  23,  125 
Hieroglyphics,  23 
History  as  Literature,  116 
History  of  Criticism  in  Europe, 

43,  220 
History  of  English  Literature, 

170 


History  of  English  Poetry   89 
History      of      English      Prose 

Rhythm,  43 
History   of    English    Rhythms, 

108 

History  of  the  Jews,  225 
History  of  Moorish  Empire  in 

Spain,  213 

House  of  Gentlefolk,  57 
Huckleberry  Finn,  59 
Hymn   to    Intellectual   Beauty, 

23 

Idylls  of  the  King,  55 
Iliad,  97,  105 
Inspiration  of  Poetry,  31 
Ion,  25 
Irrational  Knot,  167 

Jewish  Encyclopedia,  225 
Julius  Caesar,  56 
Jungle,  155,  200 

Kalevala,  103 
Kinds  of  Poetry,  117 
Koran,  218 
Kubla  Khan,  186 

La  Mare  au  Diable,  87 

Lady  of  the  Lake,  55 

Laila  and  Majnun,  206 

Laocoon,  62 

L'Avare,  87 

Le  Chartreuse  de  Parme,  57 

Le  Debacle,   57 

Leaves   of   Grass,  65,  80,   124, 

159,   178 

Lectures  on  Art,  130 
Lectures  on  Sacred  Poetry  of 

Hebrews,    102 
Les  Martyrs,  58 
Les  Miserables,  58 
Letters  to  French  Academy,  86 
Levana    and    Our    Ladies    of 

Sorrow,  57 
Life  of  Johnson,  221 
Life  of  Roscommon,  113 
Lily  and  the  Bee,  118 
Lily  of  the  Valley,  59 
Literary      Criticism      in      the 

Renaissance,   179 


INDEX  OF  BOOKS  AND  WRITINGS      261 


Literary  History  of  the  Arabs, 

219 
Literary    History    of     Persia, 

203,  225 

Literary  Study  of  Bible,  103 
Lives  of  the  Saints,  108,  114 
Locksley  Hall,  213 
Logic,  136 
L'Oiseau,  87 
Lorna  Doone,  70 
Lost  Illusions,  59 
Louis  Lambert,  59 
Luzumiyyat,  218 
Lyrical  Ballads,  65 

Macbeth,  56 

Madame  Bovary,  140 

Madamoiselle   de   Maupin,   138 

Main  Currents  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  92 

Main  Street,  232 

Making  of  Humanity,  212 

Making  of  Poetry,  200 

Manon  Lescaut,  87 

Maqamat,  218 

Martyrs,  87 

Master  Builder,  59 

Michael,  51 

Modern  Painters,  53 

"Mr.  Sludge,  the  Medium,"  125 

Muallaqat,  105,  206,  211,  213, 
215 

Nature  of  Poetry,  32 

Nether  World,  155 

New  Era  in  American  Poetry, 

161 

New  Rome,  143 
Niebelungen  Lied,   102,  154 
Nigger  of  the  Narcissus,  57 
Njala,  no 
Notre  Dame  de  Paris,  58 

Odyssey,  07 

On   Literary   Composition,    119 
On  the  Sublime,  15,  128,  160 
Optimos,  118 
Orlando  Furioso,  60 
Otherworld,  122 
Ottoman  Poetry,  214,  225 
Outcast,  143 


Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat,  50 
Oxford  Book  of  English  Verse, 

66 
Oxford    Lectures    on    Poetry, 

75,  126 

Panegyrics,  119 
Paradise  Lost,  68 
Paradise  Regained,  67 
Path  of  the  Rainbow,  98 
Paul  and  Virginia,  87 
Peer  Gynt,  59,  164,  174 
Peloponessian  War,  53,  137 
Penguin  Island,  232 
Pere  Goriot,  57 
Phaedrus,  26,  53,  122 
Pickwick  Papers,  23 
Pierre  and  Jean,  148 
Piers  Plowman,  158 
Pilgrim's  Progress,  49,  184 
Poetic  Principle,  74,  144 
Poetics,  42,  43,  136,  221 
Poetry  and  Its  Varieties,  88 
Poetry  and  Religion,  39 
Politics,  180 
Poly  Olbion,  85 
Pompanilla,  89 
Pontica,  85 
Possessed,  122 

Post-Biblical  Hebrew  Litera- 
ture, 172 

Power  of  Sound,  62 
Principia,  40 

Principles  of  Psychology,  135 
Progress  of  Poesie,  19 
Prolegomena,  203 
Prophetic  Books,  44 
Psalms,  20,  64,  100,  171,  215 
Psychology  of  Prophecy,  37 

Qasidas,  206 

Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,  23,  57 

Raven,  61 

Religion  and  Thought  in  An- 
cient Egypt,  99 

Renaissance,  53,  116 

Republic,  26,  53,  122,  160 

Revivifying  of  the  Sciences  of 
the  Faith,  34 

Revolt  of  Islam,  86,  125 


262      INDEX  OF  BOOKS  AND  WRITINGS 


Richard  Feverel,  54 
Rigveda,  105,  106,  107 
Ring  and  the  Book,  61,  86,  122 
Robinson  Crusoe,  49,  71 
Romance  of  the  Rose,  158 
Rudin,  57 

Sagas,  98,  109,  no 

Sanskrit  Literature,  106 

Scarlet  Letter,  53 

Science  of  Poetry,  233 

Silas  Marner,  44 

Sister  Carrie,  83 

Solitaire  of  Time,  223 

Song  of  the  Harper,  99 

Song  of  Myself,  176 

Songs  Before  Sunrise,  140 

Spanish-American     Literature, 

Studies  in,  177 
Specimens    of    English    Prose 

Style,  92 

Spirit  of  Russia,  162 
Spoon    River    Anthology,    69, 

116 

Strife,   155 

Studies  in  Islamic  Poetry,  218 
Sunken  Bell,  174 
Symposium,  26,  53 

Tain  Bo  Cualnge,  108 
Tales  from  Shakespeare,  69 
Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,  50 


Telemaque,  86 

Tempest,  134 

Ten  o'Clock  Lecture,  138 

Ten  Thousand  a  Year,  118 

Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles,  122 

Text  Book  of  Irish  Literature, 

108 

Theoria  Sacra,  48 
Thus  Spake  Zarathustra,  245 
Tom  Jones,  236 
Tragische  Motiv,  181 
Treasure  Island,  247 
Tristram  Shandy,  49 
Triumph  of  Death,  51 

Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  70 
Upanishads,  22 

Vanity  Fair,  23,  65,  180 
Vedas,  22,  105 
Velasquez,  138 
Vicar  of  Wakefield,  49 

Wandering  Jew,  143 
War  and  Peace,  57 
Weavers,  155,  200 
What  is  Art  ?  140 
WildK  Ass's  Skin,  59 
Wild  Duck,  59 
Wilhelm  Meister,  49 
Wooing  of  Our  Lord,  109 
World  as  Will  and  Idea,  53 


32726 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000  686  663     6 


